NEW YORK -- At the start of another scorching July day, the guy who runs the corner bodega perfumes the air with the scent of café con leche. Hip-hop begins percolating, too, one ingredient in a musical stew flavored with salsa, merengue, bachata, mambo, Reggaeton. Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans breathe to these beats, some getting ahead, others just getting by.

The scene could be a snapshot from many a Miami neighborhood. But it's actually the opening sequence of the Broadway show In the Heights, whose 13 nominations make it the leading contender going into Sunday's 62nd annual Tony Awards.

The musical represents a nine-year odyssey and, no matter what happens on Sunday, a dreamer's triumph for its wiry creator and star, 28-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The first successful Broadway musical created by and featuring Latino artists, In the Heights is a joyful mosaic of life in Washington Heights, a neighborhood near the George Washington Bridge in far north Manhattan. The show is reflective of the place that inspired it, one neighborhood down from Inwood, where Miranda grew up. But just as its fictional residents have far-reaching roots, In the Heights has multiple connections to a place far to the south of its setting.

''Miami,'' says Miranda, ``is our secret weapon.''

Miami has, in fact, been a major source of the talent involved in In the Heights. Andréa Burns, a New World School of the Arts grad who plays the show's sassy beauty-salon owner, pinpoints one of the reasons why: ``You can't really replace the experience of growing up in two cultures simultaneously. Many of us are first-generation Americans. That's what connects us so much.''

Says Nina Lafarga, a Miamian in the show's ensemble: ``This is about Latinos in Washington Heights, but we all can relate to the story on some level. How do you hold onto your culture but learn to adapt? . . . We have so much Miami pride in this show, it's insane.''

Besides Burns, Carlos Gomez and Janet Dacal have leading roles; Lafarga, Tony Chiroldes, Afra Hines and Joshua Henry are in the ensemble. All have South Florida roots -- most have relatives still living here -- and studied at such places as New World, Coral Park Senior High School, Miami Senior High, the University of Miami and Florida International University.

STEALING RARE MOMENT

Alex Lacamoire, the musical's Tony-nominated co-orchestrator/arranger and musical director, was a high-school music major at New World. An arranger and associate conductor on the smash hit Wicked, he now conducts (while playing keyboards, no less) every performance of In the Heights. Recently, he stole a rare quiet moment in his dressing room at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre to reflect on the sounds and the appeal of Miranda's show.

When he listened to Miranda's music and joined the creative team in 2002, Lacamoire says, ``It was the first time I'd heard someone successfully rap in musical theater. It just flows, with little twists and turns. The show mixes all three at once -- Latin music, rap and musical theater. . . . It's very contemporary and still a musical theater show. It's pioneering.''

As the composer-lyricist, Miranda had the final say regarding every note in what became an exuberantly lush, eclectic score: ''[In the Heights] is his brainchild; he came up with it out of nothing,'' Lacamoire says.

But he also allowed Lacamoire, whom he calls ''a godsend,'' and fellow arranger-orchestrator Bill Sherman, a college pal of Miranda who focused on the hip-hop sounds, great creative leeway.

''Lin would give us the basic framework, but this score could not be more me,'' says Lacamoire, who got his post-Miami training at Boston's Berklee College of Music. ``I absolutely had to do research on the styles, because I never gigged on Latin music. But growing up Cuban in Miami, every birthday party you'd hear that music for five straight hours.''

Dacal, who plays one of the show's gossip-loving beauticians, met Lacamoire when she was at Coral Park High, and he accompanied her at drama competitions. She explains the musical synergy this way: ``Alex gets into Lin's head and knows what he needs to pull out to make the music come alive. Alex, Lin and Bill are such a great team. They have kept [the music] authentic and real.''

Miranda, whose family is Puerto Rican, began creating In the Heights during his sophomore year at Connecticut's Wesleyan University. The gifted son of a political consultant father and a psychologist mother was influenced by such Broadway shows as West Side Story -- he directed a production at Hunter College's high school, his alma mater -- and the 1998 Paul Simon-Derek Walcott flop, The Capeman. Their extraordinary music aside, both shows have plots suffused with conflict, violence and death, as did the 1979 Luis Valdez play-with-music Zoot Suit, which was also a Broadway failure.

''I suffered the worst case of mismanaged expectations when I went to see The Capeman in high school,'' Miranda says. ``The score is gorgeous. . . . But 40 years after West Side Story, you still can't have a real Puerto Rican experience onstage without someone carrying a knife?''

That wasn't the kind of story Miranda wanted to tell. So working at first on his own, then with director Thomas Kail, also a Wesleyan alumnus, playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, Lacamoire and Sherman, Miranda created the portrait of a neighborhood over a Fourth of July weekend.

''I felt it had to be about the community, that the bodega would be a clearing house for all the neighborhood stories,'' Hudes says, adding that In the Heights was quite different when she got involved four years ago. ``The story was a love triangle, and there were characters who aren't in it anymore. There was such a spirit of love and life to it when Lin came to me. But we started from scratch, with a huge leg up.''

Through readings, workshops and a 2007 Off-Broadway run that won the show a host of awards, a multicultural musical with multiple story lines -- performed largely in English, with plenty of Spanish artfully mixed in -- evolved.

Usnavi, the bodega owner played by Miranda, is the show's rapping narrator, a man pining for the beautiful Vanessa, whose only wish is to move downtown. The brainy Nina, back home from Stanford with a secret, is being pursued by Benny, an ambitious black employee at the car service owned by Nina's parents, Kevin (ex-Miamian Gomez) and Camila. With encroaching gentrification, flamboyant beauty shop owner Daniela (Burns) is packing for a move to cheaper quarters in the Bronx. And Abuela Claudia -- not anyone's real grandmother but a surrogate abuela to the neighborhood -- gets lost in memories of her younger days in Cuba.

AN UPLIFTING SHOW

Though the show is full of intricate rhymes, quick-hitting references to things as diverse as Take the A Train and The Lord of the Rings and such nostalgic touches as a singing piragua (Puerto Rican snow cone) vendor, some critics have carped that In the Heights is as sweet as the condensed milk Abuela Claudia tells Usnavi to add to the café con leche. Yes, one person dies, and there is vandalism on the night of a blackout. But In the Heights is, overall, celebratory and uplifting.

That soaring feeling moves the show's cheering audiences. But it gets to the performers, too.

Henry, an ensemble member and UM grad, remembers being ``blown away the first time I heard the music. There's lots of salsa and hip-hop. I grew up with that, but I never thought I'd hear it in a musical-theater setting. When we [first] sat at the table and went through it, it's like my life was changed. I cried at the end. We were all jamming.''

Dacal, who managed to finish her communications degree at FIU between the end of the show's Off-Broadway run and its Broadway opening, says of Miranda, ``He writes joy. You hear his music, and you want to dance and sing. Who doesn't want to feel that?''

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@