Why Selena still matters
For many Mexican Americans, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, Queen of Tejano music and and the first Latin artist to hit the Billboard 200 chart, was way more than a pop star: She was a game changer for their identity, proof that the way they looked and sounded was good enough.
Maybe that’s why, a full 20 years after she was shot dead by the president of her fan club, Selena can still draw a crowd. On April 17th and 18th, some 50,000 people descended on the small Texas city of Corpus Christi for the first annual Fiesta de la Flor, a sold-out two-day music festival honoring Selena’s life and legacy.
To the uninitiated, the rabid fandom that surrounds Selena may be hard to understand. Even people who were barely toddlers when Selena died are still celebrating her in GIFs and YouTube makeup tutorials, helping fund her holographic resurrection and flocking to Corpus Christi to dance in the pouring rain in her memory. What gives?
To find out why La Reina de Tejano still matters, we reached out to four people who say Selena changed their lives.
Destiny Navaira
Destiny Navaira is part of a musical dynasty with strong ties to Selena. Her mom was friends with her, and both her father and her uncle used to play music with her. Now 22 — just a year younger than Selena was when she died — Destiny feels a bigger connection with her than ever:
Selena is a singer as am I, Selena is a born and raised Latina from Texas as am I, but perhaps the most important similarity I feel towards Selena is that singing isn’t just singing, it’s a therapy, an expression and a lifestyle. As a trying-to-be up and coming Tejano female singer, I look up to Selena for her beauty, amazing personality, but most importantly, her ability to relay feeling to audiences when she would sing.
She made it okay to be darker skinned, okay to have brown eyes and black hair, and okay not to have Spanish as your first language and make a career out of singing it, and being able to go to Mexico and do the same.
George Rojo
George Rojo is a host at KXTQ-FM, a Tejano radio station in Lubbock, Texas, where he says people still request Selena songs all the time. His own memories of her start early:
I remember being nine years old and using my allowance to buy her first studio album, “Selena,” which I bought as a cassette. I remember driving across the state as a twelve year old, listening to “Entre A Mi Mundo” in my Walkman. I know all the lyrics to her songs from those long road trips.
Selena died on my fifteenth birthday, which affected me greatly. She made me feel like it was okay to be Tejano, it was okay to be Mexican-American, because here was a Mexican-American like myself, making it big for herself. If she could do it, maybe I could, too. She cemented my love for Tejano music, and that led to a job at a Tejano radio station.
Stephanie Bergara
Stephanie Bergara is the lead singer of an Austin-based 10-piece Selena tribute band, Bidi Bidi Banda, and says Selena “helped to shape my life and my own career in music.”
Here’s why:
Selena was the first Mexican American woman I remember seeing on television. The fact that someone who was like me, looked like me, spoke Spanglish like me, etc. was on TV, making big things happen for herself, struck a chord with me as a child and well on into my adult life.
As a musician, she helped me to see there was no glass ceiling, you didn’t have to be defined by the limitations others put on you.
Joe Valenzuela
Joe Valenzuela, who flew to Corpus Christi from Chicago with his buddies, says Selena is very important to the gay community:
She was always proud of who she was and where she came from. That has always resonated with me. Not only as a Mexican American but also as a gay man. Since her death, she has become a huge icon in the gay community. She taught us to be ourselves and live life to the fullest.
There was no one like her, and there never will be. That’s why 20 years later people still love her. That’s why we are celebrating her legacy at Fiesta de la Flor.
Has Selena impacted you in some way? Share your story with us. Publish a response here on Medium, or tweet at us @ajplus.
