Of all the famous people in the world, relatively few are known by their first names only.
But Selena was one of them — albeit mostly in her native Latino community.
You say you don't know who Selena was? That could well be because of what happened on this day 15 years ago.
She was born Selena Quintanilla on April 16, 1971, in a relatively small Texas town on the Gulf of Mexico. She started singing at the age of 6 and, at the age of 9, was the lead singer of a group her father organized to perform in the family's restaurant.
When she was 12, she released her first album. Four years later, she was named female vocalist of the year at the Tejano Music Awards.
In the early 1990s, her popularity took off with the success of a handful of albums, but most of her recordings were in Spanish. By the mid–1990s, she was ready to make an English–language album that would be her crossover entry into the English–speaking market. In fact, she was working on such an album when this day dawned in 1995.
But she didn't live to finish it.
On the morning of March 31, 1995, Selena confronted the president of her Texas fan club at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi about evidence that she had been embezzling from the singer's fan club. The president of the fan club, Yolanda Saldívar, pulled out a gun and shot Selena in the back. Although seriously wounded, Selena ran to the hotel lobby and identified her assailant. She died a short time later, about two weeks before she would have turned 24.
(In hindsight, what would have been Selena's 24th birthday was a significant day in my life as well. April 16, 1995, was Easter Sunday. I spent that day with my parents and some family friends. It was the last time I ever saw my mother.)
Selena's death sent shock waves through the Latino community. At the time, it occurred to me that it may have had the same kind of cultural impact as the deaths of Elvis Presley and John Lennon, but it barely made a ripple in mainstream America.
Tom Brokaw called her "the Mexican Madonna," but the name Selena didn't ring a bell with non–Spanish audiences.
How well I remember going into a convenience store to pick up a paper the day after Selena was killed. The story was on the front page, and it actually sparked a brief conversation between the clerk (a white female) and a young black woman who was behind me in line. They seemed to know each other. One of them (I don't remember which) made an observation about the killing. Neither knew who Selena had been. Their conversation quickly turned to other matters as I paid for my newspaper.
I think it is likely that more non–Hispanic people would have known who she was if she had lived to release what was intended to be her breakthrough album. Later in 1995, a posthumous album, "Dreaming of You," was released, and it included several English–language tracks that she had worked on prior to her death.
I've never been a fan of Tejano music so I can't really say much about Selena's Spanish recordings. But, based on what I have heard of her English recordings, I think Brokaw's comparison to Madonna was apt. She had Madonna's knack for both popular dance tunes and love songs, and I'm sure she would have been a big success in the predominantly English–speaking market.
But that vast potential audience was left with only hints of what might have been.
