Eagle Pass, Texas — Some say that when Selena died, the Tejano genre of music she popularized lost its way.
Selena and her band had taken the Texas border sound beyond folksy roots as a Mexicanized polka and planted it firmly in the mix of Caribbean and Latin American pop. With her trademark versatility and her songwriter brother, a campesino sound went urban.
And while Tejano had been very male and macho, Selena became its glittering, wholesome diva.
Now, a decade since her murder on March 31, 1995, aficionados say Tejano's influence could revive in a younger generation.
"She was sort of everyone's daughter in terms of the Tejano family," said Roy Flores, a longtime Tejano industry leader. "I guess in terms of a legacy, she certainly put Tejano on the national map."
Flores was setting up the 25th annual awards ceremony last weekend at a 5,000-seat venue in the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino Complex. In Selena's day, the Tejano Music Awards occurred at San Antonio's 65,000-seat Alamodome.
To appreciate the Selena legend is to understand the cultures along the Texas-Mexico border.
European farmers brought the accordion in the early 20th century, when railroads opened south Texas and cheap land beckoned. While few stayed past a few blistering summers or the first hurricane, their polkas remained.
Coupled with a bajo sexto, or twelve-string guitar, the conjunto sound developed -- similar to the norteno on the Mexican side of the border (where accordions were brought by Europeans working in Monterrey breweries). In the 1960s, the keyboard was added and Tejano was born.
It was regional music, part of a familial, isolated culture. Deep South Texas was more than 80% poor and Spanish-speaking, so there was a language and culture barrier with the whites who ran the schools and governments.
Also, the Spanish was so peppered with slang that Mexicans across the Rio Grande didn't understand some of Tejano music either.
"The dialect was different. A lot of the Mexican people that would listen to it could not accept the language because it wasn't right," promoter Al Gonzalez said. "And then we were learning so much English that we kind of lost who we were."
Selena "hit a market at the right time," when Mexican American girls were hungry for an identity, Gonzalez said.
"It was the young crowd, the 8- to 10-year-olds that were idolizing her, and that's what really grabbed her in," he said. He likened it to what he called "the McDonald's effect."
