An Honorary Spanish Diva, I am

One can say Selena's father, Abraham Quintanilla is a money hungry asshole who milks everything he can in his daughter's name for money. He doesn't give all of it away to charity and every year he releases compilations just to extract more money. All of this is true




Let's take a minute though and reflect upon the GOOD that Abraham Quintanilla has done. Aside from releasing actual rarities that had Selena not died would have never been heard, he has really popularized Selena and helped her name rise to almost Elvis-esque levels, at least in the USA Spanish world. She's become an idol and so so so so SO many aspiring Latino singers emulate her style. She brought RnB stylings to Spanish which is a good thing.



Selena's music crossed over to the English market's psyche. Everyone knows who she is, because of that movie he produced with Gregory Nava. Because of it, he has exposed lots of non-Latinos to TEJANO, GRUPERO and RANCHERA music...music what otherwise they would have never been familiar with. I think that's a great thing and is something that has done alot of good to expose different styles of Latin music to other markets. There has never been anything in pop culture that has crossed over from Regional Mexican/American world and I am happy that Selena's music has done so.

Now the worst thing that has happened after her death....because of Selena, the movie, it brought Jennifer Lopez to the mainstream and created a talentless, tone deaf monster who is not even pretty! She must have sold her soul to the devil, there is nothing uniique about her, but she has managed to become a top figure in the entertainment business and it's all Selena's fault. BEcause of this film, she got the idea to launch herself as a singer.





Now that I mention the movie, I want to discuss a rather TASTELESS thing that I noticed yesterday that came about this film. When the movie was set for release in March of 1997, Abraham launched the first (of many many more to come) posthomous compilation that had rarities titled "Siempre Selena". Thhey released to radio and television a single, a ranchera recorded for "Don Juan De MArco" (film she cameoed in and sang in) but never used titled "Siempre HAce Frio". It's a cover of Cuco Sanchez. There are two things wrong, SO wrong in this action.





The first...the video! JEnnifer Lopez's silhouette is used, dressed as Selena in the Astrodome and she is lip-synching parts of the song in a dimly lit shadow and she is projected images upon her of Selena's performances. That is so disrespectful to Selena. It's implying that Selena can be replaced by JEnnifer Lopez and she is simply something that can be brought back with a puppet like JEnnifer, which is all J.lo is anyway, a puppet who can be ANYBODY. I had never seen this video before and I only found out about it last night.


The second..the song itself! Selena had just passed away, and the lyrics of this song say "Matame cielo, quiero morirme, tragame tierra".. Talk about picking on healing wounds! How could Abraham release this song?! Does he not have a heart??? I can't believe that a father who lost his child would be willing to listen to a song which speaks of wishing to die. And more so knowing that so many people loved her. I always found this song disturbing at the time...but now after 10 years I can appreciate it. Abraham should have waited.


So that's it folks, thanks for reading my ramblings about Selena. I recently have been re-listening to alot of her material and just remembered how much of a rarity she was. Oh well, I hope she's watching down on us.