Selena Living Through Amanda
YouTube is where I first saw Amanda Solis. Believe it or not, I was looking for a Muhammad Ali impersonator and ended up looking at Selena impersonators. That’s when I saw Amanda. I had to squint my eyes to see on my iPad because the little YouTube square of Amanda’s video was so small in the side bar. I thought, “This girl looks like Selena. Let me get a closer look”. When I clicked into Amanda’s video, that’s when I saw her name. The only reason I knew she was not Selena Quintanilla because I had seen the word impersonator. Other than that, I would have thought it was a rare video of Selena.
Almost everyday I see Amanda on Instagram. She gets so many views and comments on her videos and photos. When I see Amanda sing and dance, I can’t help but say that Selena is living through Amanda. Sometimes she looks, acts, and sound so much like Selena that it is scary. It made me wonder if Selena had a child in her teenage days nobody knew anything about before I got to know Amanda’s story. All kinds of thoughts were running through my mind. However, it turned out that Amanda had a mom that also looked like Selena. Every time I hear her story about how she lost her mom and how she was inspired to keep Selena’s legacy alive, there seems like a big purpose or reason that all those things happened.
What was it that really led me to Amanda? Something inside told me to choose her to write about though I had seen other girls doing a great job impersonating Selena. I wanted more of the world to know more about Amanda. I wanted the world to see that “yes” we lost Selena, but in some way we have not. Her songs are echoing through another voice that is similar to hers. They are echoing through someone that is more than an impersonator because Amanda is actually singing Selena’s songs with her very own voice. She is someone talented.
See Amanda on Instagram at the Satellite Bar.
