Selena Perez Essay Research Paper Imagine what

Selena Perez Essay, Research Paper

Imagine what it would be like to grow up as a performer in a world that didn?t

even except female Tejano singers? Can you imagine how much courage and work it

would take to make it to the top? That?s was Selena Quintanilla Perez had to

go through. Selena was born in Lake Jackson, Texas on April 6th, 1971 to Abraham

and Marcella Quintanilla. Abraham was a shipping clerk for a chemical company

and Marcella was a housewife. Abraham being a well respected Mexican musician,

who only sang English songs, and had his career ruined because of that. American

people didn?t respect him because he was Mexican, and the Mexican people did

not respect them because they sang English songs. By the time Selena reached age

10, it became very obvious that Selena was a natural born performer and that she

had a great amount of singing talent. Abraham decided to start a band, he was

afraid that the same thing would happen to her, so he decided to teach her some

Spanish songs, but one problem, Selena only knew how to speak English, so Selena

went on with most of her life not even knowing what the words meant that she was

singing. Well in order to start the band they would need more then Selena so

Abraham made Abraham III (nicknamed A.B.) her older brother, and Suzette, her

older sister. A.B. already knowing the drums, Suzette already knowing the drum,

and Selena having an awesome voice started their band, ?Selena Y Los Dinos?.

They started practicing together and performer a little. In 1980, Abraham and

Marcella opened up a Mexican restaurant. At first business was booming, Abraham

even had to quit his shipping clerk job to devote his full time and attention to

the restaurant. Unfortunatly after the Texas Oil Bust of 1981, the restaurant

went bankrupt and had to be shut down. So Abraham bought a bus and ?Selena Y

Los Dinos? began to tour the Texas countryside. At age 13 Selena had to leave

8th grade and start taking high school correspondence courses by mail. Selena

sang almost exclusively Spanish. She sang a Tex-Mex pop called Tejano. They made

there first recording in 1984, slowly people started to notice and love Selena,

but by her being a female Tejano performer, no one thought she would actually

last, because the Tejano industry of music was ruled over by men, and although