Houston Chronicle - 10 years page 2

Whether or not Selena changed Tejano's status quo, she certainly changed the genre
By EYDER PERALTA
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

No matter where you are in Corpus Christi, there are reminders of Selena.

A tourist map lists her grave site, the Selena Museum and a memorial that was erected in 1995. Selena, in many ways, has become this region's miracle — the subject of a heralded story about life and death with themes similar to the hurricane that wrecked the city in 1919.

Like that storm, she came and went and left a difference in her wake — in her case a new Tejano-music scene. Despite a modest upbringing in Corpus Christi, Selena went on to dominate a patriarchal music business.

Selena, you could say, was an unintentional feminist.

"For a long time, Tejano music was a male area," said Maria Gonzalez, a professor of Mexican-American literature and feminist philosophy at the University of Houston. ''Selena was one of those musicians who entered a musical field that was completely dominated by macho Tejano musicians."

And she did it within the strong patriarchal framework of her family and her religion.

Family portrait

Her father, Abraham Quintanilla, was the indisputable head of the family. He was Selena's manager and handled business affairs for her and her band. His wife, Marcela, was always in the background. Even after Selena's death, Abraham was the family's spokesman, while his wife mourned privately.

Selena also grew up a Jehovah's Witness, a member of a group that considers a woman as a weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7) and the biblical teaching that a wife should submit to her husband.

Selena didn't submit, at least not professionally. Instead, she headed a mostly male band, and her husband, Chris Perez, backed her up on guitar.

"She came in and celebrated her femininity," Gonzalez said. "And not just her femininity, her sexuality as a female person.

"Women in Tejano were usually seen as a side thing, and read as objects. Selena turned around and said, 'This is my subjectivity.' I am projecting this position. It's not being projected onto me.' In that sense she was taking a fairly (typical) patriarchal stance."

Exploiting Selena

Manuel Peña, a professor of music at California State University at Fresno and the author of two books on Tejano music, disagrees. He points to the early '90s when Selena and Emilio Navaira were at the top of their games. "He and Selena were the male and female icons of Tejano music," he said. "But Selena was always portrayed as this sultry temptress who nonetheless was seen as the girl next door, whereas Emilio projected this virile, in-charge, masculine dominance with his form-fitting clothes. He was the man, and she was still the woman, just shy of being the sex kitten. . . . She was very much exploited by a very much male-dominated industry."

Selena is always set apart from the other two female icons in Tejano music: Chelo Silva and Lydia Mendoza. Silva was seen as an incendiary and standoffish figure, the queen of the bolero and the torch song, who took flak from no one.

Houston's Mendoza is considered the first woman to make it in the Tejano world, during the late '20. Her signature song became Mal Hombre, a diatribe against a bad man. In the chorus she sings with the style of Edith Piaf: "Bad man," goes the song (translated from Spanish), "your soul's so damaged it hasn't got a name."

Musicologist Chris Strachwitz, who founded Arhoolie Records, notable for its extensive catalog of classic Tejano music, wrote a book about Mendoza. He points to the different eras in which these women lived. While Selena was an urban Tejana, Mendoza and Silva grew up when a lot of Mexican-Americans were part of the migrant-worker community. Silva's father struggled with alcoholism, so the hard times about which she sang weren't a put-on.

''(Selena) didn't impress me," Strachwitz said, ''except she was obviously a young chick who said, 'Listen, I'm a young modern Chicana. I'm going to flaunt what I got if that's what the people want, if that's what MTV loves. I don't care what the old folks said."

Her torch songs

At a glance, Selena's catalog doesn't seem to have the same grit as Silva's. Selena's hits, like the lovelorn Como la Flor, the soap-operaish Amor Prohibido or the posthumous I Could Fall in Love, are clean pop offerings. But deeper into the albums you find that all her recordings (minus the posthumous Dreaming of You) contain at least one scathing torch song in the spirit of Silva.

Mentiras (off her major-label debut Selena) is basically the same song as Silva's Mentirosa, except Silva sang it from the perspective of a wronged man, and Selena sings it from the perspective of a wronged woman.

On ¿Qué Creías?, from her third release, Entre a Mi Mundo, she sings, "You thought you'd find me happy to take you back / But as you can see, it's not that way. / I want nothing to do with you, / So just pick up and go."

Her most scathing song is on her landmark Amor Prohibido.

"You're nothing but a coward," she sings on Cobarde. "You lack the bravery to speak to me / but sooner rather than later, you'll remember me good."

In simple terms, Gonzalez said, feminism is about challenging a socially acceptable patriarchy and offering an alternative.

And while some argue that Selena was used by the male society as an object, Gonzalez points out that escaping patriarchy is nearly impossible, because it's so deeply ingrained inmany parts of society.

What most agree on, though, is that Selena did cross boundaries.

"I think (she) gave the women a tremendous liberation charge, yeah," Strachwitz said.

Selena was able to walk the fine line between being a sex symbol and a musician, between being a goddess and a peasant. She was married and — like Mendoza and Silva — kept working, a rarity for Tejano-music singers.

And for that she's been canonized. She fooled society into thinking she was playing by the rules, while she was really gently breaking them.

eyder.peralta@chron.com

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