A Golden Globe nominee for Best Picture, La Bamba is the story of the emergence in the late 1950s of a 17-year-old Mexican American boy--Ritchie Valens (Lou Diamond Phillips), whose real name was Ricardo Valenzuela--from the migrant camps and fruit groves of California's San Joaquin Valley to the front lines of rock. Fusing Latin sounds and rhythms with a rock and roll beat that changed music history, Valens had a string of chart-topping hits including "La Bamba," "Donna" and "Come On Let's Go" when his career was tragically cut short by the 1959 airplane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. With his dreams mostly misunderstood by his family, including mother (Rosana De Soto) and half-brother Bob (Esai Morales), Ritchie struggles to negotiate a path to show business success uncharted up to that point by Latino performers.