{"id":137691,"date":"2015-03-31T22:36:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T22:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/151.106.38.4\/2015\/03\/31\/selena-20-years-after-her-death\/"},"modified":"2015-03-31T22:36:35","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T22:36:35","slug":"selena-20-years-after-her-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/2015\/03\/31\/selena-20-years-after-her-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Selena: 20 years after her death"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When Selena was breaking concert attendance records at home and abroad, there weren\u2019t a lot of crossover pop stars who looked like her in the United States.<\/div>\n
The March 31, 1995, death of the Mexican-American singer plunged many Latino listeners into mourning and brought her music to the attention of English speakers who would soon become fans.<\/div>\n
Selena Quintanilla-Perez started singing the Tejano music that eventually made her famous in her father\u2019s restaurant in Lake Jackson, Texas. Her father Abraham taught the family band and named them Los Dinos after his own group from earlier years. Selena\u2019s brother, A.B., played bass, and her sister, Suzette, played drums.<\/div>\n
When the family moved to Corpus Christi, the group started getting gigs at local parties and weddings.<\/div>\n
Selena was only 15 when she won female entertainer of the year at the Tejano Music Awards. That got her a record contract, and several albums followed. She eventually married her guitarist, Chris Perez.<\/div>\n
In 1994, she won a Grammy for best Mexican-American album for \u201cSelena Live!\u201d and seemed poised for mainstream stardom.<\/div>\n
When the president of Selena\u2019s fan club shot her to death the following year in a Texas motel room, her first English-language album was months from release. Her death made international headlines, and her funeral drew 60,000 mourners.<\/div>\n
She was 23 years old.<\/div>\n
Twenty years later, her influence is still being felt. Her official Facebook page still has more than 2 million likes, and fans are remembering the singer who crossed barriers and made them sing and dance to her blend of Tejano music. Fans will celebrate her life and legacy at the commemorative Fiesta de la Flor in Corpus Christi in mid-April.<\/div>\n
Here are five things you may not know about Selena:<\/div>\n
Selena had to learn Spanish.<\/div>\n
A third-generation Texan of Mexican descent, Selena didn\u2019t grow up speaking Spanish. Neither did her husband, Perez, who played guitar in her band and fell in love with her on the road.<\/div>\n
In his book, \u201cTo Selena, with Love,\u201d Perez said they practiced speaking Spanish before their first big publicity blitz in Mexico. \u201cIn Mexico, Selena mangled her conversations in Spanish like the rest of us, but not for long.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cShe said, \u2018It\u2019ll be cool. You watch. I\u2019m going to learn Spanish and surprise everybody,\u2019 \u201c Perez wrote. \u201cShe got better and better, to the point where I\u2019d have to ask her to slow down so that I could understand what she was saying.\u201d<\/div>\n
Her album went to No. 1.<\/div>\n
Her 1995 crossover album, \u201cDreaming of You,\u201d went to the top of the Billboard 200 the first week it was released. She was the first Latin artist to debut atop the list.<\/div>\n
\u201cThere were supposed to be 14 tracks, but we had only recorded four of them, so we put together a tribute album of new and old songs,\u201d Nancy Brennan, then vice president of A&R at EMI, told Texas Monthly. \u201cMaking that album was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do, because we were listening to her voice all day and crying as we were mixing the songs.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSelena\u201d (the movie) ignited Jennifer Lopez\u2019s career.<\/div>\n
Starring as Selena in the 1997 movie of the same name, Jennifer Lopez became the first Latina actress to be paid $1 million for a movie role. Lopez was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance.<\/div>\n
\u201cGetting to play the part of Selena was life-changing for me,\u201d Lopez told Para Todos magazine. \u201cI got to immerse myself in her life, got to know her family, her home, her culture … every part of her story. It was a special time in my life both professionally and personally. Playing her not only opened doors for me in the film world, but it inspired me to start my own music career. In a lot of ways, I wouldn\u2019t be where I am today if I hadn\u2019t had that experience.\u201d<\/div>\n
Selena\u2019s killer is eligible for parole in 2025.<\/div>\n
Yolanda Saldivar, the president of Selena\u2019s fan club, was sentenced to life in prison in October 1995 for Selena\u2019s murder. Saldivar must serve at least 30 years of her sentence before she is eligible for parole.<\/div>\n
Selena was meeting with Saldivar at a Corpus Christi motel to discuss her concerns that Saldivar had embezzled money from her when Saldivar shot her, according to trial testimony. Saldivar argued that she accidentally fired the shot, but the jury didn\u2019t buy it.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Selena was breaking concert attendance records at home and abroad, there weren\u2019t a lot of crossover pop stars who looked like her in the United States. The March 31, 1995, death of the Mexican-American singer plunged many Latino listeners into mourning and brought her music to the attention of English speakers who would soon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}