When playwright Marco Ramirez was growing up in Hialeah, music from Cuba’s great orchestras could be heard through his grandfather’s small Sony boombox on cassette tapes at family gatherings, from Nochebuena celebrations to weddings.

The backdrop for Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada’s last performance in Miami could not have been more dramatic. It was a brunchtime show at the 2023 Ground Up Festival on a sofa-strewn second floor with huge plate glass windows looking out at the beach. As Estrada sang, accompanied only by her Venezuelan cuatro, rain poured down in torrents behind her, waves the size of semi-trucks crashed ashore and palm fronds stood out sideways from their trunks, whipped from the north by tropical storm-force winds. Both the singer and the weather gods put on a spellbinding performance.

Check out our interview with Tim Manley, the author of "My Own Kind of Person."

Young British filmmaker George Jaques has assembled one of the best queer casts for his second full-length feature “Sunny Dancer” (Quiver). It’s a movie that, despite also prominently featuring the music of Scissor Sisters, is not in the least bit queer.

It would be inexcusable to write about LGBTQ+ recordings and exclude the limited-edition reissue of “’Howl’ and Other Poems” (Craft Recording) by legendary gay poet Allen Ginsberg, pressed on “eco-friendly green blend vinyl” and re-released to commemorate Ginsberg’s centennial (he was born June 3, 1926, and passed in 1987).