From blocks away, against the backdrop of North Philadelphia’s cement streets, fiery Latin rhythms will call you. “La Guagua 47” will arrive at Esperanza, at 5th and Bristol Streets, on Saturday, July 25. The concert begins at 6:00 p.m., but come early and find a good spot, settle in, and let the music carry you on a cultural journey. The music celebrates Puerto Rican culture and tells the magical story of finding home — and finding ourselves.

Esperanza Arts Center presents a free outdoor concert, part of the “Arte en las Calles” festival, showcasing “La Guagua” chorus members from neighborhoods across Philadelphia and New Jersey. They will perform songs from a new bilingual musical created by well-known Alba Martínez, who wrote and composed it as a love letter to the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia and on the island.

On July 25th, the music is coming to the community in Hunting Park. Alba is bringing the music to the people on the 5th Street corridor, just blocks from where her own story began.

At a moment when many Latinos are being told, in ways loud and quiet, that they do not belong, she is placing a 15-year-old Puerto Rican girl at the center of an American stage and declaring the opposite: that we all belong, and that this city, this country, is ours, too.

The musical tells the story of Lucía, uprooted from the mountains of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, after her family loses everything. She leaves behind her abuelita, her friends, and the only home she has ever known, and lands in the unfamiliar Philadelphia summer. Feeling invisible in her new city, she boards the Route 47 bus — and meets a chorus of neighbors whose stories crack her world open like a coconut. It is, in many ways, Martínez’s own story.

Alba has always been an artist. She came to Philadelphia in 1985 to work as an attorney. At first, she felt lost and lonely. She longed to connect with the Puerto Rican community, yet no one in her circles seemed to know where to find it. So she flipped through the blue pages, scanning for Puerto Rican and Latino businesses and organizations, until a name caught her eye: Taller Puertorriqueño. She dialed, and a man on the other end laughed and told her, “Nena, móntate en la Guagua 47 y ven a la 5 y Lehigh.” She boarded the 47 — and found herself on a journey she hadn’t expected. The bus rolled north through the city’s immigrant neighborhoods, from the Mexican and Asian communities of South Philadelphia, past the fish stands and mango carts of the Ninth Street Market, all the way to 5th and Lehigh, where she stepped off into salsa, Spanish, and a group of people at Taller who finally felt like home.

The music of “La Guagua 47” moves the way its riders move — between languages, between islands, between generations. Salsa gives way to bolero, bolero to bachata, bomba to reggaetón, all threaded through contemporary musical theater. English and Spanish flow through the show the way they flow through a North Philadelphia kitchen: English for the wide world, Spanish for the moments of intimacy, humor, and truth. Martínez has said the show is built so that no one ever feels lost — whether you follow the dialogue or simply surrender to the music, the story carries you like the bus itself.

What most distinguishes “La Guagua 47,” though, is who is building it. Through her artist residency, La Guagua Creativa, at Taller Puertorriqueño, the same institution she came across in the blue pages forty years ago, Martínez is developing the musical with the very community it portrays. Neighbors react to new songs, share their own migration stories, and join the Community Chorus, which carries the show’s music to places where musical theater typically does not go: plazas, parades, festivals, sidewalks.

That chorus takes center stage on July 25. Led by musical director Jay Fluellen and vocal and acting coach Victor Rodríguez, with Alba as creative director, writer, and producer, professionals and community members will perform songs and storytelling from the musical, joined by La Guagua 47 Orquesta, under the open sky at Esperanza. Admission is free.

“La Guagua 47 is an embrace,” Alba says. “A musical that wants to bring people together in a world that wants to drive us apart.”

For more information, visit @laguagua47musical, laguagua47musical.com or philadelphiatheatrecompany.org