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    Johnny Rodriguez, Country Music Star, Dies at 73

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    He was best known for the 1970s hits “I Just Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind” and “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico,” and as the first popular Mexican American country artist.Johnny Rodriguez, who became the first Mexican American country music star with a string of hits, died on Friday. He was 73.His daughter, Aubry Rodriguez, announced his death on social media on Saturday. The post did not cite a cause of death.Mr. Rodriguez rose to fame in the 1970s and was best known for the hits “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico” and “You Always Come Back (to Hurting Me).” He released six singles that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, and nine others reached the Top 10.In 2007, Mr. Rodriguez was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, which described him as the “greatest and most memorable Chicano Country singer of all time.”Juan Raoul Davis Rodriguez was born on Dec. 10, 1951, in Sabinal, Texas, around 65 miles west of San Antonio. A list of survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Rodriguez, the second youngest of 10 children, started playing guitar at the age of 7 when his older brother, Andres, bought him one. Their father died of cancer when Mr. Rodriguez was 16, around the same time Mr. Rodriguez formed a band, and Andres died the next year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Rhiannon Giddens Reflects on Biscuits and Banjos Festival

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      Not long ago, Rhiannon Giddens knew every Black string musician. The dedicated few were largely collaborators and colleagues, many of whom met a generation ago at the landmark Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C.Giddens, the folk musician and recipient of all the accolades (Grammys, a Pulitzer, a MacArthur), no longer knows everyone who followed her path. That expansion, she figured, was reason to celebrate.She did so the last weekend of April at her inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival in Durham, N.C., a jamboree featuring twangy banjos, groovy basses, clickety bones and, yes, the devouring of many flaky, buttery biscuits.Festivalgoers dance at the Biscuits & Banjos festival in Durham, N.C.Kate Medley for The New York TimesThe festival culminated in a reunion by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Black string band led by Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson. The group met at the Boone gathering, taking apprenticeship under the old-time fiddle player Joe Thompson.The Grammy-winning band resuscitated styles like Piedmont string music, presenting them to a broader audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Detroit Opera Steps Into Trump’s Cross Hairs With ‘Central Park Five’

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      A rehearsal of “The Central Park Five,” an opera about the Black and Latino boys wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger, was just a few days old this month when the tenor who plays Donald J. Trump began to sing.“They are animals! Monsters!…Support our police! Bring back the death penalty!” he bellowed.The opera, which chronicles how the young men were forced to confess and later were exonerated, depicts President Trump as an inflammatory figure who, in 1989, bought several full-page newspaper ads that demonized “roving bands of wild criminals,” adding, “I want them to be afraid.”When the work — composed by Anthony Davis with a libretto by Richard Wesley — premiered in California in 2019, Mr. Trump’s approval ratings were low and Democrats were itching to challenge him.Now, as a new production opens next month at the Detroit Opera House, the setting is quite different. Mr. Trump is a resurrected, emboldened political force who, since returning to office, has wielded power to shutter federal agencies, cut grants and strong-arm law firms and universities, all of which has led some opponents to worry about retaliation.None of this has been lost on Detroit Opera, as the company braces for blowback and hopes for applause. Its leadership team understands the perils of mounting a production that waves a red cape at a pumped-up, reactive presidency.Surprisingly, the opera is partially financed by the National Endowment for the Arts, with some $40,000 of the production’s $1 million cost coming through a federal grant. It was awarded, and paid, before the agency canceled most of its existing grants at the Trump administration’s direction.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Inside the Controversy Surrounding Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Remake

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      Disney knew that remaking “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as a live-action musical would be treacherous.But the studio was feeling cocky.It was 2019, and Disney was minting money at the box office by “reimagining” animated classics like “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Jungle Book” as movies with real actors. The remakes also made bedrock characters like Cinderella newly relevant. Heroines defined by ideas from another era — be pretty, and things might work out! — were empowered. Casting emphasized diversity.Why not tackle Snow White?Over the decades, Disney had tried to modernize her story — to make her more than a damsel in distress, one prized as “the fairest of them all” because of her “white as snow” skin. Twice, starting in the early 2000s, screenwriters had been unable to crack it, at least not to the satisfaction of an image-conscious Disney.“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which premiered in 1937, posed other remake challenges, including how to sensitively handle Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy and Doc. (One stalled Disney reboot had reimagined the dwarfs as kung fu fighters in China.)Still, Disney executives were determined to figure it out. They had some new ideas. More important, the remake gravy train needed to keep running.“It’s going to be amazing, another big win,” Bob Chapek, then Disney’s chief executive, said of a live-action “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at a 2022 fan convention.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The New ‘Captain America’ Movie Isn’t Great. But Don’t Call Him a D.E.I. Hire.

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      Anthony Mackie picks up the shield at a potentially awkward time. But there’s one way Disney can do right by him and the next generation of Marvel stars.“Captain America: Brave New World” is a mediocre-at-best movie, a roughly cobbled together film that pales in comparison to the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s still better than the franchise’s most recent run of disasters, and its strong opening weekend at the box office seems to have restored some momentum to the M.C.U. But the most remarkable part of this film is the irony of how it lands in the political moment: “Brave New World” features a Black iteration of the quintessential American superhero a month into an administration that has made eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion one of its first priorities.In a way, Disney’s timing regarding diversity was always going to be off. For most of the run of one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, diversity was an afterthought. For the first decade of the M.C.U., over the course of more than a dozen films, the heroes carrying the franchise — the central protagonists — were exclusively white men, until Chadwick Boseman led “Black Panther” in 2018.So, yeah, Disney started out a little behind.But when it came down to the handoff of the star-spangled shield from the blond-haired and blue-eyed Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), Disney actually built a steady platform for the M.C.U.’s first Black Captain America to lead his own film.The 2021 Marvel TV series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” provided the space for Sam to develop into Captain America in earnest, not just as a kind of M.C.U. diversity hire.Sam’s transformation into the Captain could have easily been the M.C.U.’s version of “The Blind Side,” a tale of a Black man’s triumph under the tutelage of the true, original white hero. He also could have been the Uncle Tom Captain, a servile Black man unquestioningly putting his life on the line.But “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” explored Sam’s reticence in taking on the mantle of Captain America, given how his Blackness so often marginalized him, made him a target or turned him into a stereotype in the eyes of some of his fellow citizens. The show also introduced a Black super soldier named Isaiah Bradley, who received the super serum like Steve Rogers. But Isaiah never became the lauded hero Steve did; he was made a prisoner and a science project, jailed and experimented on for 30 years. He’s a reminder to Sam of what can happen as a Black man in American, no matter his standing, his strength or his title.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      The Comedian Looking for Something All of America Can Laugh At

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      Partway through his latest special, “Lonely Flowers,” the comedian Roy Wood Jr. tells the story of the time he accidentally hired a white photographer. Or, as he corrects himself, he hired a photographer who he did not think would be white until he showed up. Whenever he travels to a city for a gig, he explains, artists who live there reach out to him to offer their services. He respects their hustle and sometimes accepts those offers, like the one he got from a guy who wanted to take some pictures of him. “Come on take the pictures,” Wood wrote back. “I’ll see you next week, Deon!”Wood drops Deon’s name casually, letting the audience pick up on the joke before he has to explain it. As they start to lose it, Wood joins them in astonishment. Pitching his body forward, throwing his arms out and bugging his eyes, he yells: “You see what I’m saying? I don’t know no white Deons either! Never met one!”Deon ends up being a bald, unimaginably chiseled military veteran with menacing tattoos consisting of “an animal, a death threat then a Bible verse” decorating his arms, the kind of white man that a Black person might not want to be left alone with. Wood is terrified of him — he makes sure to pay him up front — but he finds him unexpectedly sympathetic. It turns out that after returning from service abroad, Deon feels intensely isolated, and photography gives him a sense of purpose.Onstage, Wood is unhurried, an amiable man who, despite being 46, has the countenance of a churchgoing grandfather who still starches his Sunday suit. He is a master of the leisurely, even comforting, story that plays to his audience’s expectations of what is good, kind and virtuous, only to foil those expectations with a well-timed word or mischievous glance.When I first watched “Lonely Flowers,” I could feel this story about Deon teetering toward the saccharine: Maybe we can all get along, or at least get along better, if we just listen to one another. But then Wood lets us in on a disturbing detail: “I like the camera,” Deon told him, “ ’cause, you know, I get to look down the crosshair and still shoot people.” Wood’s look of earnest sympathy dissolves, and we’re left wondering how to feel about Deon after all.Then the joke rounds yet another corner: Wood turns serious again, recalling how sincerely Deon thanked him in the greenroom, shaking his hand firmly and looking him right in the eye. “I was like, Wooowww,” Wood says, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, seemingly humbled by the interaction. But then we reach the other side of his pause: “He was about to kill some people.” Wood imagines Deon at home, cleaning his rifle right up to the moment Wood contacts him. “We’ll never know how many lives I saved,” Wood says triumphantly, “because I took a chance on a white man!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Files to Dismiss Sex-Trafficking Charge Due to ‘Racist Origins’

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      The music mogul’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss a sex-trafficking charge, saying that the law involved has “racist origins.”Lawyers for Sean Combs filed a motion on Tuesday night seeking the dismissal of one of the sex trafficking charges he is facing, arguing that the hip-hop mogul is being unfairly prosecuted based on his race.Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and is awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail, was indicted on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges — the most serious of which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.His lawyers’ filing focuses on a lesser sex trafficking charge, which stems from a federal law known as the Mann Act. The law makes it illegal to transport a person “with intent that such individual engage in prostitution.”Mr. Combs’s lawyers contend that the law has “racist origins” and that it is being deployed against a “prominent Black man” for allegedly using an escort service to transport male escorts across state lines to have sex with his girlfriends.“The use of escorts, male or female, is common and indeed widely accepted in American culture today,” they write. To emphasize what it depicted as the noncriminal nature of the conduct, the filing notes that the chief executive of the escort service that Mr. Combs is said to have used has been interviewed in the media and was featured in a Showtime reality series.The lawyers questioned whether any white person had been charged under the law based on similar allegations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Minnesota Vikings Celebration Dance Pays Homage to ‘White Chicks’

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      Not everyone loved the 2004 film “White Chicks.” But 20 years later, some N.F.L. players are paying homage to it in the end zone.If you don’t remember, “White Chicks” was a 2004 comedy in which the Black actors Marlon and Shawn Wayans donned heavy makeup to disguise themselves as white women.Its rating on the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes is 15 percent. Not good. Not even meh. The New York Times review of the film suggested viewers might want to prepare for it with “a full frontal lobotomy.”Yet somehow, 20 years later, “White Chicks” is still hanging around. An essay in The New York Times this past summer suggested that time had been kind to the film, hailing it as “a culturally, racially and sexually savvy tale” whose “spiky critique of white privilege has revealed itself to be far more incisive than its lowbrow humor would indicate.”On Sunday, the comedy somehow became a part of a National Football League game.After an interception by the Minnesota Vikings against the Atlanta Falcons, two players, Josh Metellus and Camryn Bynum, performed a celebratory dance. Aficionados of decades-old gender and race bending comedies recognized it as the one performed by the Wayans brothers at a dance-off in “White Chicks.”Perhaps inspired by the innovative dance, the Vikings won the game, 42-21. Bynum was proud of the celebration, posting on Instagram: “Best celly’s in the league.”In 2017 the N.F.L., which had once been so strict that it became known to fans and the news media as the “No Fun League,” relaxed its rules by allowing more elaborate celebrations. Since then players have become increasingly creative.Earlier this season, the same two Vikings performed a dance from the 1998 remake of “The Parent Trap,” starring Lindsay Lohan, in which a simple handshake turns into an elaborately choreographed routine. More