{"id":290248,"date":"2020-03-31T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/music-news\/selena-quintanillas-enduring-legacy-how-the-late-superstars-influence-ended-up-everywhere\/"},"modified":"2020-03-31T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T13:00:00","slug":"selena-quintanillas-enduring-legacy-how-the-late-superstars-influence-ended-up-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/music-news\/selena-quintanillas-enduring-legacy-how-the-late-superstars-influence-ended-up-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Selena Quintanilla’s Enduring Legacy: How the Late Superstar’s Influence Ended up Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Selena<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Houston Chronicle, John Everett<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Watching old clips of Selena Quintanilla<\/strong>\u2014whether she’s singing, talking or just flashing that radiant smile\u2014is an exercise in exhilaration and heartbreak.<\/p>\n

It never gets tiresome, enjoying her enchanting presence.<\/p>\n

But it does get awfully sad, especially once you lose yourself in the music and then remember that she’s gone.<\/p>\n

Gone since 1995, in fact, and the amount of time she’s been gone has surpassed the amount of time she spent on this planet.<\/p>\n

And yet her legacy endures and her influence on the Latin-crossover music scene\u2014and far beyond, probably further than most people realize\u2014is as strong as ever, despite the mellifluously voiced pop star being struck down just as her fame was reaching new levels for all the right reasons.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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“Selena was such an inspiration to me and I was so lucky to be chosen to play her,” Jennifer Lopez<\/a><\/strong> shared in an Instagram post<\/a> on March 21, the 23rd anniversary of the release of Selena<\/em>, featuring her own star-making turn playing the late singer.<\/p>\n

“As an artist, this movie truly was an experience I’m going to remember for the rest of my life. Please share your memories of Selena and the movie with me below.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Selena<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/George Gongora-Corpus Christi Caller-Times, File<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Already a Grammy winner and burgeoning mogul with her own clothing line and a boutique-salon, Selena was killed\u2014shot dead by the founder of her first fan club\u2014in her native Texas on March 31, 1995. She was 23. More than 30,000 people viewed her casket at the Bayfront Plaza Convention Center in Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n

In the years that followed, her story was of course brought to the masses by the biopic Selena\u2014<\/em>and will be again in Netflix’s Selena: The Series<\/em><\/a>, starring Christian Seratos<\/strong>\u2014but she herself continued to be revered as a singular artist and person, known locally for her humanitarian work with battered women’s shelters and youth programs such as D.A.R.E.<\/p>\n

A life-sized bronze statue stands in her hometown of Corpus Christi, where the Selena Museum opened in 1998. More than 65,000 people packed Houston’s Reliant Stadium for a tribute concert in 2005 and in 2011 the U.S. Postal Service put her on a stamp as a “Latin Legend.” Enamorada De Ti<\/em>, a tribute album of Selena covers, was released in 2012.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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Selena Day is celebrated in Texas annually on April 16, her birthday. For five years, starting in 2014, the Fiesta De La Flor, featuring a line-up of performers honoring Selena’s musical legacy, injected millions of dollars into the local economy in Corpus Christi, where she grew up, but last year the Quintanilla family said it wouldn’t be signing off<\/a> on a 2020 event.<\/p>\n

In January the family confirmed they wouldn’t be moving the festival to another city, that they were instead shutting it down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While she was poised for major crossover success after releasing four Spanish-language albums (Dreaming of You<\/em> posthumously hit No. 1), Jennifer Lopez’s connection with Selena’s story did help turn an entirely new crop of fans onto the late singer’s music.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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Lopez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, wasn’t everyone’s first choice to play “La Reina de Tejano,” whose family roots were in Mexico. (And director Gregory Nava<\/strong> even had to fight for Lopez when some non-Latina actress’ names were floated as possible choices.)<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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But J.Lo dove 100 percent into the role\u2014and both she and Selena emerged as bigger stars than ever.<\/p>\n

“God sent me that role for a reason,” Lopez said in a throwback interview<\/a> she shared this month. “So I could always have her as an inspiration.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Jennifer<\/p>\n

United Archives\/ullstein bild via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Ultimately, Selena’s rise is easily explainable, a result of her talent, charm, business smarts and the luck that’s required to actually be successful, even when all the pieces are there.<\/p>\n

It’s how she has stayed on top all of these years\u2014her influence extending to arenas she could have never imagined and her simple, sweet, melodious first name (which means “moon”) becoming iconic\u2014that may have to be attributed to otherworldly forces.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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It wasn’t just songs like the infectious “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” or the smash hits “I Could Fall in Love” and “Dreaming of You” that cemented Selena’s place in the hearts of so many artists whom she would never know, so many she had inspired just by being true to herself.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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