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Selena was born in the blue-collar factory town of Lake Jackson, just south of Houston. After her father was laid off by Dow Chemical, the family moved to Corpus Christi and plunged into the music business. "We went to Corpus Christi to put food on the table when I was 6-1/2," Selena said in the Time interview. "We would play for family weddings. When I was eight I recorded my first song in Spanish, a country song. When I was nine we started a Tex-Mex band." She stuck with it, spending much of her time as a teenager on the road and getting her high-school diploma through a correspondence course. In 1989 she and her band, Los Dinos, got their big break-a recording contract with giant EMI--and then began to ride the wave of Tejano music, now the fastest- growing segment of the Hispanic recording business. Her father still manages the band, which includes her brother and husband.
While Tejano fans reside mostly in Texas and Mexico, they range as far north as Michigan and New York City. Selena's rise paralleled the success of other Tejano bands such as La Diferenzia, Mazz and La Mafia. But Selena was far and away the biggest star of the Tejano universe. By the age of 19 she was a millionaire. At 21 she could draw a crowd of 20,000 to the fairgrounds in Pasadena, Texas. Last year 60,000 people showed up to hear her in Houston, and her Selena Live won a Grammy as the best Mexican-American album. The single Amor Prohibido (Forbidden Love), from her most recent album, has sold 400,000 copies in the U.S. and abroad. Most of her songs are a form of dance pop that combines Top 40 melodies with the rhythms of Colombian cumbia and traditional Texas conjunto-the border music influenced by Czech and German polkas, featuring accordions and bajo sexto guitars. Selena's lyrics, which were often written in English and then translated into Spanish, are straightforward and simple. At the time of her death, Selena was working on her first English- language record, one that many felt would help her cross over as Gloria Estefan did. "She was one of us," said Rosemary Escamilla of Corpus Christi. "I'd see her at Wal-Mart or K Mart without makeup, like she didn't have all that money." Said another fan: "We lost a very good friend. She was our idol. We just can't believe she died that way."