NEW CASTLE, Del. (AP) — A neat stack of 79-cent bananas and rows of colorful fruit flanked the bilingual alternative pop band Luna Luna as they performed for a small audience at a Latino grocery store in northern Delaware.
The show was part of the monthly Mercadito sessions put on by the Fiesta Fresh Market, a family-owned store in the Philadelphia metro-area city of New Castle, far away from the massive music industry hubs typically associated with
artistic opportunity and exposure. But the excitement of new music, paired with the colorful, unassuming stage, has rapidly engaged an international following for the 2-year-old store — with up-and-coming bands traveling from far away to perform, and tens of thousands tuning in online.
Jose Luis Aguilar Garcia, one of the store's owners, hopes the series highlights the persistence of joy and creativity in Latino communities at a time when they're often only brought up on the news in the context of immigration crackdowns, he said.
Jose Luis Aguilar Garcia has worked with both food and music for most of his life.
Born in Mexico, Garcia grew up in an apartment adjacent to where he would eventually open Fiesta Fresh Market. Garcia worked at farmers markets and grocery stores since he was a teenager, and ran a photography and videography company that also produced regional Mexican music like mariachi, corridos tumbados and banda.
“We did a lot of quinceañeras, weddings, that sort of thing. Music was always like something I wanted to do as a passion project, but especially here in Delaware, there’s really no industry for that,” Garcia said.
In 2023, an artist on Garcia’s label — DannyLux — was invited to perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, a semiprivate music series filmed in the middle of the radio station’s bustling Washington, D.C., bureau, and then distributed to a massive following on YouTube. It was then that Garcia realized the special appeal of an unconventional, acoustic setup.
With the capital his label got from producing DannyLux's music, Garcia opened the store in 2024 with his sister and father. And eventually, he used his experience with the Tiny Desk Concerts at the store too, merging the two otherwise disparate aspects of his life.
Garcia initially hoped the shows would attract business, but it was hard to sell local artists on performing in such a quirky context, Garcia said.
But soon, the premise caught on. All of the acts in an April show had heard about the small store on social media before they were asked to perform.
While the shows initially featured almost exclusively the Spanish-language music that Garcia produced with his label, the Mercadito sessions now showcase a broad range of artists and genres.
“I found that super interesting that no matter who the artist was that was playing, people would gather to hear,” Garcia said.
Luna Luna, which has earned recognition from outlets like Billboard and Rolling Stone, was one of three bands performing at the late April show. It was a vastly different from the other stops on their sprawling United States tour.
Large piñatas hung from the ceiling above the group as they performed — a vastly different ambiance from the stages and lights that normally set the scene for Luna Luna’s hypnotic, indie-pop ballads. The performance was illuminated with the fluorescent grocery-store lighting, which customers used to shop in the background as Luna Luna sang in both Spanish and English.
The unconventional platform was part of the appeal for lead singer Kavvi Gonzalez, along with many in the series’ rapidly growing fanbase, for whom the unique venue evokes a kind of nostalgia.
“I actually grew up shopping at stores like this, so to be able to play in one is kind of crazy,” said Gonzalez, who was born in Colombia and moved to Texas when he was 6.
The charm is in the surprising romance of the mundane, Gonzalez said.
“To see people just actually be shopping around and just living regular life while we’re doing a performance here, you know, it’s cool. It’s combining real life and music culture,” Gonzalez said.
