Sola Rey

Selena Quintanilla

Nationality: American

Place of birth: Lake Jackson, Texas. U.S.

Ethnicity: Mexican and Native American Cherokee

Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995), known simply as Selena, was an American singer-songwriter. She was named the “top Latin artist of the ’90s” and “Best selling Latin artist of the decade” by Billboard for her fourteen top-ten singles in the Top Latin Songs chart, including seven number-one hits.[1] The singer had the most successful singles of 1994 and 1995, “Amor Prohibido” and “No Me Queda Más“.[2] She was called “The Queen of Tejano music[3] and the Mexican equivalent of Madonna.[4] Selena released her first album, Selena y Los Dinos, at the age of twelve. She won Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1987 Tejano Music Awards and landed a recording contract with EMI a few years later. Her fame grew throughout the early 1990s, especially in Spanish-speaking countries.

 

 

Selena was born in Lake Jackson, Texas,[7] as the youngest child of a Mexican American[8] father, Abraham Quintanilla Jr. and a half-Cherokee Native American mother,[9] Marcella Ofelia Samora,[10] and was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness.[11] She began singing at the age of three; when she was nine her father launched a singing group consisting of several of his children, Selena y Los Dinos.[4] They initially performed at the restaurant operated by the family.[5] The family went bankrupt soon thereafter. They relocated to Corpus Christi, Texas, where they performed wherever they could: at street corners, weddings, quinceañeras, and fairs.[12] As Selena grew more popular as a musical performer, the demands of her performance and travel schedule began to interfere with her education. Her father pulled her out of school altogether when she was in eighth grade.[3] Eventually, at seventeen, she earned a high school diploma by the American School Program.[13]

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