Summer Sounds Concert Series Returns To Segerstrom Center For The Arts With A Taste Of SoCal Culture

Segerstrom Center for the Arts presents the return of an exciting summer series event, Summer Sounds on the Julianne and George Argyros Plaza. This year's Summer Sounds will bring an energizing lineup of live music reflecting a range of global influences found in Southern California including Latin, pop/rock, R&B, hip-hop, and more.

Enjoy warm weather and feel-good music with friends and family at this outdoor concert series! All events are free with RSVP and will take place on Friday evenings from June 3 to July 29. Reservations for the Summer Sounds concert series can be made online or by calling the Box Office.

Summer Series Line-Up:

Dengue Fever

Friday, June 3

7:30PM

The roots of Dengue Fever began in the late 1990's with a 6-month trek through Southeast Asia by Keyboardist Ethan Holtzman. Returning to Los Angeles with a suitcase crammed full of Cambodian cassette tapes, Holtzman and his brother Zac, who had discovered the same music while working at a record store in San Francisco, reunited. The brothers soon bonded over their love of vintage Cambodian rock and in 2002 founded the band with saxophonist David Ralicke (Beck/Brazzaville), drummer Paul Dreux Smith, and bassist Senon Williams (Radar Brothers). Shortly thereafter the members were on hot pursuit for the ideal Cambodian chanteuse to complete their outfit. After a short period of musical courtship that began at a Cambodian nightclub in Long Beach, CA, Chhom Nimol joined the band when she realized the guys shared a genuine passion for the music and culture of her homeland. That passion is a cross pollination of Khmer rock, garage rock, psychedelic rock and the British Invasion sound..

Dengue Fever has performed in front of thousands of fans at such noted music festivals as WOMAD (UK, AUS, NZ), WOMEX (Spain), Melbourne Festival (AUS), Glastonbury (UK), Bumbershoot, (USA), Transmusicales (France), Roskilde (Denmark), Electric Picnic (Ireland), Peace and Love (Sweden), Treasure Island (USA) among many others. Their songs have appeared in films such as City of Ghosts, Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, The Hangover 2, the Showtime series, Weeds, the HBO's hit series True Blood, and numerous independent documentaries.

J. Boykin & Positive Vibes

Friday, June 17

7:30PM

Millennial Saxophonist J. Boykin, affectionately known as the "Sax Sensation" has played with and opened for Frankie Beverly & Maze and Ledisi, John Legend, Boney James, Gerald Albright, Take 6, Koinonia, Kirk Whalum, Doc Powell & Brian Culbertson. J. has appeared on Fox Televisions "Glee" and J.'s "Happy" video was spotlighted when Oprah interviewed Pharrell on Oprah Prime.

Reyna Tropical

Friday, June 24

7PM

Reyna Tropical is composed of Mexican expats Fabiola Reyna and Sumohair. The duo met as part of Red Bull Music Academy's Bass Camp at Bonnaroo Music Festival in 2017-chosen as two of 20 up-and-coming producers and musicians from around the country. It was there that they bonded over their love for the tropical diaspora and began experimenting with their unique writing process: a process inclusive of pure improvisation consisting of a four-hour session per song aimed at capturing the moment and the environment. Today, Reyna Tropical merges their passion for social justice and community organizing with the space and opportunities that they can create through their music. As the bands tagline, "Queer Love & Afro-Mexico" is dedicated to raising awareness and funds to issues connected to the environment, inclusive of Indigenous rights, Afro-Mexican rights, missing and murdered indigenous women, and the many injustices that live in and in between the spectrum of Queer Love & Afro-Mexico.

With the continued support of artists such as Bomba Estéreo, Lido Pimienta, Portugal The Man, and Y La Bamba, Reyna Tropical has also been recognized by Remezcla (Reyna Tropical: A Queer Love Revolution), Grimy Goods (Reyna Tropical Pay Tribute To The World's Bodies Of Water And Life On Sublime New Ep Sol Y Lluvia), and NPR's 2022 artists to watch.

Sizzle Fantastic is a DJ, public speaker, and former labor-immigrant rights organizer born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Boyle Heights, California. Currently, she is the resident DJ and Director of Cumbiatón, a nationwide event paying homage to the Afro-Latinx cultura and musica de barrios. Through music, art, and activism she uplifts and centers women, immigrant, queer, and working-class BIPOC communities. Her work has been praised by many and has been featured in reputable outlets such as Los Angeles Magazine, Remezcla, and Uproxx. Sizzle Fantastic holds DJ residencies all throughout Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. You can find her on Instagram and Soundcloud to stay up to date with her shows.

Event schedule:

• 7:00 - 8:00: DJ Sizzle Fantastic
• 8:00 - 9:00: Reyna Tropical
• 9:00 - 10:00: DJ Sizzle Fantastic

Alice Bag

Friday, July 8

7:30PM

Alice Bag is a singer/songwriter, musician, author, artist, educator and feminist. Alice was the lead singer and co-founder of the Bags, one of the first bands to form during the initial wave of punk in Los Angeles.

The Alice Bag Band was featured in the seminal documentary on punk rock, The Decline of Western Civilization. Alice went on to perform in other groundbreaking bands, including Castration Squad, Cholita, and Las Tres. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books 'Violence Girl' and 'Pipe Bomb For the Soul.' Her influence on popular music is highlighted in the Smithsonian exhibit, American Sabor. Her self-titled 2016 debut album received critical acclaim and was named one of the best albums of 2016 by AllMusic. Her second album, Blueprint, was named one of the Best Albums of 2018 by NPR and the Los Angeles Times.

Jungle Fire

Friday, July 15

7:30PM

Conceived as a one-off Afro Latin funk jam between friends in 2011, Los Angeles' JUNGLE FIRE has quickly and steadily become an explosive 10-piece Tropi-Funk juggernaut lighting up sold out dance floors and music festivals in several continents. Since the release of their initial 7" singles on the Ohio-based Colemine Records through the 2020 release of their critically acclaimed self-titled full-length LP via Los Angeles' Nacional Records, JUNGLE FIRE's unique blend of deep funk, West African dance music and Afro- Caribbean rhythms has been a favorite of well-known DJs and taste makers worldwide, including the likes of Craig Charles and Gilles Peterson (BBC), the Paris DJs (France), Rich Medina, Garth Trinidad (KCRW), Cut Chemist, DJ Numark and NPR, to name a few. Juno Records (UK) has summed up the band's live show experience by stating: "Few bands live up to their name in the way JUNGLE FIRE do; fusing Cumbia, Afrobeat and trad funk, each JUNGLE FIRE jam blazes the floor with real power". Consisting of musicians who have played, recorded and/or toured with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Ozomatli, De La Soul, Celia Cruz, LCD Soundsystem, U2 and Kelis among many others, their sound is a direct reflection of the musical and cultural landscape of the city they call home; a highly explosive musical cocktail ready to ignite lovers of funky beats worldwide.

Mariachi Arcoiris

Friday, July 22

8:00PM

Led by director Carlos Samaniego, Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles treats audiences to the highest level of musicality in mariachi and Mexican folklore. Billed as the world's first mariachi band comprised entirely of LGBTQ musicians, Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles is proud to have Natalia Melendez, the first transgender woman in the history of mariachi as one of its members. Natalia has been featured in a two-part special for Univision news, which depicts her life and struggles as a transgender woman in the mariachi world. Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles has been invited to play for Univision's morning news on multiple occasions. With a passion for representing the LGBTQ community, Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles has also performed for Los Angeles and Long Beach Pride, Transgender Pride at the LGBT Center in Los Angeles, South Bay Pride, Oceanside Pride, The Abbey, Club Tempo, Hamburger Mary's, and as part of the #SchoolsNotPrisons tour for the California Endowment.

Extra Ancestral

Friday, July 29

7:30PM

Founded by Kahlil Cummings in 2017, Extra Ancestral is a cultural movement dedicated to educating and entertaining audiences through the fusion of different cultural manifestations of the African Diaspora. In their performances, audiences are likely to experience genres such as Afrobeat, Reggae, Jazz, Salsa, and many traditional African musical forms of the Diaspora. Narrated through powerful ancestral dancing, Extra Ancestral provides an in-depth education of temporal and geographic borders from Africa to the Americas and back, providing lessons from the past to hone tools for the future.

Learn more at SCFTA.org.

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