LITTLE ROCK — You might have heard Tejano music rattling through the desert late at night, rolling the knob of the FM dial toward a signal. You picked up the horns, the squeeze box, a polka sung in Spanish ...
Or maybe you have heard the African-derived cumbia pop they play in the barrios of San Antonio and Brownsville. Fleet fingers running up the neck of a nylon string guitar. The tink and tumble of eerie percussion, the thrilling trill of a flash soprano, a dominant synthesizer figure mixed up high in the familiar drum, bass, guitar and keyboard pop cocktail.
Tejano is more than a singular genre. Tejano is simply the Spanish word for a Texan of Mexican or Latin American heritage, and music has never been a respecter of borders, be they stylistic, geographic or ethnic. The Queen of Tejano - who might have been an international superstar if not for the panicked decision of an embezzling employee - started her career as a 12-year-old singing Spanish phonetically.
Her father, Abraham Quintanilla - a respected but ultimately failed musician who bears only a fleeting resemblance to Mr. Joe Jackson, formerly of Gary, Ind. - once complained that to be successful a Tejano musician had to be “more Mexican than the Mexicans ... more American than the Americans.”
Maybe you never heard Selena - maybe you never heard of Selena - until she was murdered. That’s OK, that only means you’re not Hispanic or Texican. Selena was big news in the part of America that the other part overlooks, and though she was plotting a breakout - an album mostly sung in English! - it took a tabloid tragedy to bring her to our attention 15 years ago.
To those who know it, her story is familiar. She was born in Texas, a full-fledged American with Mexican roots, and released her first record at the age of 12 while she was furiously studying Spanish to maintain credibility with her audience. She won her first Tejano Music Award when she was 15, and signed a recording contract with EMI Latin at 17.Between 1990 and her death in 1995, she became one of the world’s biggest recording stars, while remaining virtually unknown to most Americans, and soared to record-setting fame throughout the Spanish speaking world and beyond.
The Days Inn on Navigation Boulevard in Corpus Christi, Texas, is not a particularly glamorous venue; it’s a typical budget chain place - clean, free wi-fi - convenient to the airport and just off Interstate 37. It doesn’t look to exploit the historic infamy it incurred on March 31, 1995; in fact, it actively discourages fans and morbid curiosity seekers from disturbing the privacy of its paying guests.
Years ago, the rooms were re-numbered, and the staff has been instructed not to reveal the location of the room formerly numbered “158.” All the rooms are odd-numbered now. If you want to know exactly where Selena was shot, you’ll have to guess.
“Selena” has a strange echo to it these days - there’s a young pop star, Selena Gomez, who’s well on her way to eclipsing her namesake’s fame. She’s on the same iPods and playlists as Justin Bieber and the Jonas boys; she has made it in America in a way the old Selena might have if the 23-year-old “Queen of Tejano music” not been murdered in a generic motel by, as the reports invariably described Yolanda Saldivar, “the president of her fan club.”
They made a not-bad biopic about Selena in 1997, with Jennifer Lopez in the lead. Lopez - whose acting in the film was generally praised - didn’t sing any songs, but instead lip-synced along to Selena’s recordings. Respect.
LA LEYENDA
A month ago, Capitol Latin/EMI released a boxed set that encompassed Selena’s entire, decade-long career. It’s called La Leyenda (The Legend), and it’s available in multiple CD and digital download configurations. The four-CD boxed set, which gathers 82 tracks, grouped by musical style and language ( there’sone disc of Selena singing in English, another disc of live performance), along with a bound book with “rare” photos, retails for $98.98. There’s also a two-CD collection ($19.98) and a single, “hits” CD ($13.98). (All three configurations are also available for download purchase from major digital service providers, accompanied by digital booklets with the personal messages, photos and artwork.)
It’s discouraging that the singer’s most fervent fans - the ones most likely to shell out for a deluxe package - are likely to already own all or most of the tracks that are collected on the boxed set. They might have wished for a few unreleased cuts or a DVD of a concert performance.
But for most of us, who are either unfamiliar with Selena or know her primarily as a tragic story, the collections serve as a reasonable entry point to an accessible and surprisingly passionate, sophisticated singer who had a genuine chance of realizing her crossover dreams.
While Selena is - like her idol Madonna - essentially a singer of disposable pop songs, there are times when her vocal talent overwhelms some of her rather generic material. And when she gets a genuinely great song, like the dynamic “Si Una Vez,” from 1994’s Amor Prohibido (her last album before the posthumous Dreaming ofYou), she makes it count. (She wrote that song, along with many others, with her older brother, A.B. Quintanilla, who produced many of her records and continues to be a major presence in Tejano music.)
The fourth disc, of live material, leads off with a fullthroated disco medley that comprises familiar tunes like “I Will Survive,” “Funkytown,” “Last Dance,“ “The Hustle” and “On the Radio.” It’s exuberant, unselfconsciously unironic and so obviously a blast for the singer and her band that one can’t help be genuinely touched.
We can hear playfulness, and a kind of shining dignity in that voice and there’s plenty of evidence here of a personality - of a nascent artist - who’s only beginning to come into her full powers. In a way, Selena reminds one of Nick Drake - you can’t help but wonder what she would have become. Certainly less invisible to her fellow Americans.
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Style, Pages 25 on 04/13/2010