How to watch Black Voices in Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2025
Guess who's back? Back again! It's almost that time! The Black Voices in Gaming Showcase returns June 9th at 9AM PT, streaming during @summergamefest weekend!
Get ready for world premieres, dope interviews, and bold voices pushing the culture forward. Don't miss it!#BViG… pic.twitter.com/p84nLSt4Cl
— Black Voices in Gaming (@BVIGaming) June 2, 2025
Summer Game Fest kicks off on June 6 with its opening livestream, followed by the indie-focused showcase Day of the Devs. On June 7, you can watch a showcase for time-sucking cozy games called Wholesome Direct, as well as the Women-led Games Showcase that will feature 39 titles from women-led and majority women development teams. That will be followed by the Latin American Games Showcase for titles created by Latin American developers and the Green Games Showcase for games that make direct contributions to green initiatives. On June 8, there will be showcase dedicated to Xbox games, featuring reveals and updates from across Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda and Activision Blizzard. In addition, Death Stranding 2 will premiere at the event on the evening of June 8.
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Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Ritchie Valens died too young. His legacy will live on forever
This essay is adapted from Merrick Morton's 'La Bamba: A Visual History,' published by Hat & Beard Press. 'Dance!! Dance!! Dance!! to the music of the Silhouettes Band!!' read the handbill. The Silhouettes featured Ritchie Valens — 'the fabulous Lil' Richi and his Crying Guitar!!' — at a 1958 appearance at the San Fernando American Legion Hall in Southern California. He was 16 years old. The Silhouettes was Ritchie's first band, and they launched him into history. But a silhouette itself is an interesting thing: You can see the general shape of something while you hardly know the figure casting the shadow. Valens' musical story begins with the Silhouettes, and we have been filling in his story, and projecting ourselves onto it, ever since he left. A founding father of rock 'n' roll, he would lose his life barely a year later, when the plane carrying members of the Winter Dance Party Tour — Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens — crashed on Feb. 3, 1959, in an Iowa snowstorm. A Chicano icon. A stranger. Ritchie was a kid playing his guitar to make money for his family and one song he played was a version of 'Malagueña.' The number was rooted in centuries-old Spanish flamenco music that had spread in all directions, becoming a classical music melody and a Hollywood soundtrack go-to by the 1950s. In his hands, it became a catapult for guitar hero god shots. 'Malagueña' communicated experience and rico suave flair to his audience. Meanwhile, his mom was selling homemade tamales at his shows in the American Legion Hall. This guileless 17-year-old, Chicano kid from Pacoima found a way to introduce himself to America by taking something familiar and making it feel like nothing you had heard before. From the beginning, Ritchie heard the possibilities in turning a familiar sound forward. He saw, even as the teenager he will forever be to us, how in reinventing a song, you could reinvent yourself. Listen to 'Donna,' the heartfelt love ballad that felt familiar to Chicano ears, listeners who for years had tuned in to Black vocal groups. In the process, he cleared the way for so much great Chicano soul to come in the next two decades. Most of all, of course, listen to 'La Bamba.' A centuries-old song from Veracruz, Mexico; the tune has African, Spanish, Indigenous and Caribbean DNA. In the movie, he encounters the song for the first time when his brother Bob takes him to a Tijuana brothel, but however he first heard it, Valens viewed it as a prism, a way of flooding all that was in front of him with his voice and guitar. The music he made came from Mexico, and it came from Los Angeles, where 1940s Spanish-language swing tunes, Black doo-wop sounds and hillbilly guitar-plucking were mashed together in a molcajete y tejolote. Most of all, it came from the radio, which lined up sounds that were not like the ones that came right before and blasted them out on AM stations from corner to corner across the Southland. Radio devoured difference and transformed it, and if Ritchie is now regarded as a pioneer of Chicano music, he was in his own, brief time, a product of AM democracy, a silhouette with a spotlight shining on him. Danny Valdez knew all the songs. In the early 1970s, the artist and activist had released 'Mestizo,' billed as the first Chicano protest album put out by a major label. The singer-songwriter and his buddy Taylor Hackford would drink beer, belt out Ritchie Valens songs and make big plans. They talked about someday shooting a movie together, with Valdez playing Ritchie and Hackford directing. 'Neither of us had a pot to piss in,' said Hackford, 'so we never made that movie.' But years later, after Hackford had a hit with 'An Officer and A Gentleman,' Valdez called him and raised the idea once more. There were many steps to getting 'La Bamba' on the screen, but it began with an understanding that it would be about the music. That meant they had to make the music feel alive — namely the handful of recordings produced by Bob Keane that Ritchie left behind. The owner of Del-Fi Records, Keane was a guiding figure in the singer's life, recording his songs, urging him to mask his ethnicity by changing his name from Richard Steven Valenzuela and giving him career advice. Keane booked Gold Star Studios, cheap at $15 an hour, and brought in great session musicians as Ritchie's backing band, including future Wrecking Crew members Earl Palmer and Carol Kaye. But the recordings he made were not state of the art, even in their own time. 'They weren't high-quality,' said Hackford, comparing them to the early Ray Charles sessions for the Swing Time label. 'I had a commercial idea in mind, of music selling the film, of people walking out of the theater singing 'La Bamba' who had never heard of it before,' he said. That meant he needed contemporary musicians who understood the records and could re-record Ritchie's songs and reach an audience that was listening to Michael Jackson, Madonna and George Michael. Ritchie's family, including his mother, Connie, and his siblings, had already heard that Los Lobos were playing 'Come On, Let's Go' live in East L.A. When the band played a concert in Santa Cruz, where the Valenzuela family was living by the 1980s, a friendship grew. 'Danny and I knew Los Lobos in the '70s when they were just starting out,' says writer and director Luis Valdez, 'when they were literally just another band from East L.A. We were very fortunate that they were at that point in their career where they could take on this project. Without Los Lobos, we wouldn't have Ritchie. David Hidalgo's voice is incredible. I don't think we could have found other musicians to cover him. They come from East L.A., they're all Chicanos. They were paying an homage. We happened to be in the airport together when they got the news that 'La Bamba' had become number one in the national charts.' 'They called themselves the spiritual inheritors of Ritchie Valens,' says Hackford. 'And they went in and re-recorded Ritchie's songs plus several that he had played in concert but never recorded.' Now Hackford had his own album of old tunes that turned in a forward direction. Next, Hackford made sure there were roles for modern performers to play the classic rockers from the Winter Dance Party Tour. He cast contemporary performers who could re-record their material too: Marshall Crenshaw as Buddy Holly, Brian Setzer as Eddie Cochran and Howard Huntsberry as Jackie Wilson. Then there's the surprise of the first song heard in the film — a rumbling version of Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love?' that had Carlos Santana, hired as a soundtrack composer, playing with Los Lobos, and Bo himself offering a fresh vocal over everything. 'We were so happy to have the touch of Carlos Santana as part of Ritchie's story,' said Luis Valdez. 'It's his guitar that underscores a lot of the scenes and he had a theme for each of the players. We screened the whole movie for him first and he was very moved by it and ready to go right away once he saw it without his contribution. He was alone on the soundstage at Paramount, where we recorded his soundtrack, doing his magic with his guitar. He became a great friend as a result of that. It's incredible what an artist can do.' The original soundtrack recording topped the Billboard pop charts and went double platinum. Hackford loved pop music; his first feature film, 'The Idolmaker' (1980), was a rock musical. Releasing hit music became a key promotional element of the package. In advance of 1982's 'An Officer and a Gentleman' came 'Up Where We Belong' by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. It went to No. 1 a week after the opening. For 1984's 'Against All Odds,' he selected Phil Collins to sing the title cut, a song released three weeks before opening; the song soon went No. 1. 1985's 'White Nights' had two No. 1 songs, Lionel Ritchie's 'Say You Say Me' and Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin's duet 'Separate Lives.' One looming problem for 'La Bamba' was that the 1987 moviegoing public was not familiar with the name Ritchie Valens. Hackford had ideas for that as well. He set out to introduce him to contemporary audiences — convincing the studio to fund a unique teaser trailer to run weeks before the official movie trailer went into theaters. The producer assembled a parade of familiar faces to reintroduce Valens. The short film included Canadian hitmaker Bryan Adams and Little Richard talking about the icon. There was also the vision of Bob Dylan in a top-down convertible riding along the Pacific Coast Highway. The 17-year-old Dylan was present at a Valens concert in Duluth, Minn., just days before the plane crashed; he popped up talking about what Valens' music meant to him. 'You bet it made a difference,' said Hackford. After the 'La Bamba' soundtrack became a hit (there was also a Volume Two), Los Lobos made the most of their elevated success. They had experienced head-turning celebrity with 'La Bamba,' and they followed it up with 'La Pistola y El Corazón,' a gritty selection of mariachi and Tejano songs played on acoustic traditional instruments. They had banked cultural capital and directed their large new audience to this music that many had never heard before. 'La Pistola y El Corazón' won a Grammy in 1989 for Mexican-American performance. The 'La Bamba' soundtrack helped set a precedent for the crossover global success of Latin music, which has become a major force in mainstream pop culture. From Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez to Shakira, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, Becky G, Anitta, J Balvin, Karol G and Maluma, among others who are dominating the charts, racking up billions of streams, headlining massive tours and festivals. Does Hackford think 'La Bamba' helped set the table for subsequent Latino pop star success? 'I think the one who set the table was Ritchie Valens. He recorded a song in Spanish, a rock 'n' roll version of a folk song, and he made it a huge hit. 'I challenge you, any party you go to — wedding reception, bar mitzvah, whatever it is — when 'La Bamba' comes on, the tables clear and everybody gets up to dance. That's Ritchie Valens; he deserves that credit. We came afterwards.' RJ Smith is a Los Angeles-based author. He has written for Blender, the Village Voice, Spin, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. His books include 'The Great Black Way,' 'The One: The Life and Music of James Brown' and 'Chuck Berry: An American Life.'
Hamilton Spectator
8 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
‘It's so, so powerful': 44th annual Kamloopa Powwow in photos
An estimated 20,000 people attended Kamloopa Powwow last weekend. Hosted at the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Arbour, this year the powwow marked its 44th year and included a performance from a Māori group from Aotearoa (New Zealand) that sang and danced the Kapa Haka, a group dance with chanting that's referred to as a ' living art form ' of Māori culture. Stuart Patrick Jr., a Nuu-chah-nulth dancer, travelled to perform during the weekend at the powwow. 'We dance for the people,' he says. 'We danced for those who couldn't be there, and then I danced for everybody that was there, in prayers and out of my heart.' For Patrick, as a dancer being part of the powwow is a big opportunity to share his culture with other Indigenous Peoples. 'I went there to get grounded and dance to the heartbeat of the drum,' he says. Patrick was part of the senior men's category, which represents men as the community's protectors. 'We are the protectors of our family, of our nations. We will go to battle. We are the providers,' he says. 'The style that I dance, all the moves that you see, that's our celebration of our battles and wars that we've come across. 'We're telling a story of how we've overcome those battles and why we are here today.' He learned this dancing style from his West Coast culture near Ucluelet. Yasakw (Shelly) Samuels, of Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw ancestry, attended Kamloopa as a vendor. Along with her fiancée, Robert Robinson of Nisga'a Nation, the couple travelled from Haida Gwaii to attend this year's powwow. Samuels, whose Kwakwaka'wakw name is Yasakw, has a small Indigenous business called Yasakw Designs , which sells her jewelry and other handcrafted items made using traditional materials like copper and cedar. This was the second year she and her family attended the powwow. 'It just gave me nostalgia, seeing everyone in their regalia. It's so, so powerful,' Samuels says. 'We're not that far away from the Kamloops Indian Residential school, a place that was supposed to kill the Indian. 'But now here we are, as Indigenous people, practicing our culture right beside [it], it's kind of like taking our power back.' For Samuels, besides it being a powerful experience, the powwow has been important to share with her family and young children. 'I love taking my kids there, it's amazing,' she explains. 'The best part of my job is that my kids get to experience all the culture, that's the most important thing for me.' On Friday night at Kamloopa Powwow, eight-year-old Sulyálesta Grizzlypaws stepped into the arbour wearing elk tooth regalia. 'Her long braids were wrapped in otter fur, adorned with soft pink conch shells that shimmered under the sunlights,' Sulyálesta's mother Laura Grizzlypaws told The Wren via email. 'She wore an elk tooth buckskin dress and moccasins with her basket hat that speak to the beauty and strength of her St'át'imc and Warm Springs heritage. But her dance carried more than beauty — it carried history, love, and resilience. 'Just beyond the arbour stand the walls of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, a place that holds painful memories for her grandmother and countless others who were forced through its doors, stripped of language and culture in an effort to erase Indigenous identity. 'Despite those shadows, Sulyálesta dances with powerful purpose. Each step she takes is an act of honour and resistance, a living testament that the spirit and traditions meant to be extinguished have not only survived but shine brightly through her. 'Her regalia and flowing hair are not mere adornments; they are shields of cultural pride, connecting her to the teachings, ceremonies, and ancestral ways that residential schools tried to destroy.' Sulyálesta is the daughter of Laura Grizzlypaws, Indigenous educational developer, author and a Bear Dancer of the St'át'imc, and Levi Blackwolf of Warm Springs. She belongs to a strong lineage of Chiefs and the Bear Clan community and travels internationally with her mother as a Grizzly Bear Dancer, 'sharing the rich stories, songs, and dances of their people with audiences across the world, from Europe to the Yukon, Alaska, Mexico, California, Orlando, the Dakotas, and the eastern Canadian provinces.' 'Sulyálesta has carried her culture onto global stages since she was just a baby,' Laura continues. 'And here she enters into the arbour at Kamloopa Powwow, surrounded by the echoes of drums and the voices of her people. 'Sulyálesta dances not just for herself, but for her ancestors, her family, and the generations still to come. In her movements, we see proof that Indigenous culture remains alive, vibrant, and unstoppable.' Kamloops' 4 Generations Creations founder Ashely Michel organized a Wear a Ribbon Skirt & Dance Your Style special to honour the origins of her company. 'I was raised by my Mom & Grandma to always give back when I can. So, it has been a goal of mine to 'give back' through my business,' she wrote on social media in the lead-up to the event. 'I started making Ribbon Skirts for my daughter and I in 2013 to attend cultural events. My creations eventually progressed into regalia & we started travelling across Canada to Pow Wows which was the start of my business,' she added. In this photo, Michel's daughter's pink ribbons take flight as she dances in regalia adorned with blue beads. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. 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Miami Herald
8 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Explore Greater Miami and Miami Beach's Most Unique Neighborhoods by Starlight
It's no secret that Miami shines under the sun, but it also comes alive after dark. When gorgeous hues of a South Florida sunset fade and the lights flicker on, Miami's array of vibrant neighborhoods transform into buzzing hubs of music, food, culture and connection. Whether you're planning a weekend escape or a spontaneous night out, there's something unforgettable to be discovered during every star-studded evening in Miami. Start in Historic Overtown, where the smooth notes of soul and jazz echo through the streets. The Historic Lyric Theater, which was once a cornerstone of the Harlem Renaissance, is now home to live shows and performances that celebrate Black culture and history. Just a few blocks away, Downtown Miami shows off a different kind of electricity. At the Kaseya Center or the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County you might catch a popular concert, a Broadway touring show or a playoff game, depending on the night. Art doesn't sleep in Miami — and neither does Wynwood. By day, it's known for its colorful murals and buzzing cafés, but by night, the district turns into a mecca for creative cocktails, late-night galleries and performances by world-class DJs. Continue the artsy vibe in the nearby Miami Design District, where high-end fashion boutiques share the streets with outdoor installations and contemporary art museums. After hours, the district's luxurious dining rooms and stylish rooftop lounges are perfect for a sophisticated evening out on the town. No night tour of Miami would be complete without exploring Miami's rich Latin roots. In Little Havana, the sounds of live salsa spill out of open doorways as locals sip cafecito late into the evening. The nearby stretch of Calle Ocho is a hallmark of cultural pride every night, but especially so during festivals. For a more Caribbean-inspired evening, Little Haiti has many unique music venues and dance clubs that celebrate Haitian Kompa and other Afro-Caribbean genres. Across the bay, Miami Beach needs no introduction — its sun-kissed shores and Art Deco skyline set the stage for both vibrant energy and refined elegance. Beyond the palm-fringed boardwalk and oceanfront resorts, Lincoln Road is home to a world-class pedestrian promenade where high-fashion boutiques and curated cafés mingle with impromptu music and avant-garde art installations. As day turns to night, lantern-lit terraces and stylish lounges welcome you for cocktails infused with local flavors, inviting you to get a taste of Miami Beach's signature blend of glamour and sophistication. Just a short drive inland, Coral Gables showcases its own brand of polished charm. Here, bougainvillea-draped avenues lead to tucked-away speakeasies and grand Spanish-Revival landmarks that twinkle under soft, ambient lighting. Spend your evening catching a captivating performance at GableStage, then wander through courtyards framed by arched colonnades to discover opulent hotel bars steeped in history. In Coconut Grove, the pace slows down. Locals love this waterfront neighborhood for its laid-back nightlife, with wine bars, indie movie theaters and intimate live music venues tucked beneath swaying palms. Further west, Doral has quickly become a destination for top-notch shopping and upscale dining. It's ideal for those who want a chic, relaxed evening without heading into Miami's core. For a true off-the-beaten-path experience, head south to Homestead, where you can catch a race under the lights at the Homestead-Miami Speedway or stop by late-night food trucks serving authentic Cuban and Mexican eats. Meanwhile, Miami Springs and Miami Gardens — home to the iconic Hard Rock Stadium — are quietly carving out space in the local nightlife scene with community theaters, jazz lounges and delicious family-owned restaurants that stay open late. Every part of Greater Miami and Miami Beach showcases something different. You could find yourself front row at a 5-star show, dancing to incredible live music, exploring a local food scene or indulging in some retail therapy under the stars. But no matter what you choose, you won't be disappointed with the offerings in any of these iconic neighborhoods. So on your next visit, don't forget — the magic of Miami isn't limited to the daylight hours. A whole new experience is in store after sundown. Discover your ideal Miami experience at
