Selena

A three-hour concert to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Tejano singing star Selena has been set for Houston's Reliant Stadium this spring. Gloria Estefan and Thalia are among the performers who will participate in the event, to be broadcast live April 7 by the Univision Network. Houston was the site of Selena's final concert. She was fatally shot at a Corpus Christi, Texas, motel in March 1995.

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.

The weapon used to kill Tejano singing star Selena was destroyed under a judge's order, despite protests from historians who said it was a priceless piece of Mexican-American history. The .38-caliber Taurus revolver was sawed in pieces and thrown into Corpus Christi Bay. Selena, 23, was killed seven years ago, just as she was on the verge of crossing over to the English-language market. Yolanda Saldivar was convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence.

The latest version of a theatrical production on the life of slain tejano singer Selena Quintanilla has experienced bumps on the road to opening night: the replacement of its director, a one-week delay in its premiere and complaints about budget constraints and a weak marketing campaign. The musical, formerly known as "Selena Forever," has been renamed "Selena: A Musical Celebration of Life" and is now scheduled to debut at the James Doolittle Theater in Hollywood on April 19.

It has been five years, almost to the day, since 23-year-old singer Selena Quintanilla Perez was shot dead by the president of her fan club. Seven posthumous albums, one feature film, at least two documentaries and a dozen books later, some say maybe it's time the entertainment world let her spirit go. Not likely. In fact, Selena is more popular now than ever. She's one of the top-selling Latin artists of the decade. Her "Todos Mis Exitos" was the No.

The five-day Los Angeles run of the stage musical "Selena Forever" has been canceled due to disagreements between the promoters and producers of the musical, based on the murdered tejano singer's life. The show was scheduled to open Thursday night at the Universal Amphitheatre as part of an eight-city tour. The show's producers blame Universal's promoter Emily Simonitsch for "abandoning" their show due to low pre-sales of tickets.

Heralding it as a grand finale, EMI Latin today will release the soundtrack for the upcoming "Selena" movie, which represents the last previously unreleased recordings by the slain tejano superstar. "This is basically it. This is the last of the catalog," said EMI Latin President-CEO Jose Behar, who produced the album with Selena's father, Abraham Quintanilla Jr. "It's no accident. We could have released some of these songs earlier, but we wanted them for the movie."

Selena, the person, is now "Selena," the movie. Two years after the tejano superstar was slain in a Corpus Christi motel, her image reappeared before an adoring hometown crowd last Friday, one in a series of benefit premieres before the big-screen homage opens nationwide on Friday. Braving an unseasonably cool south Texas night, more than 1,000 fans clustered outside Cinemark's Tinseltown USA, while 500 others paid $100 each to watch the film with the cast and members of Selena's family.

Abraham Quintanilla made rash and unfounded statements when he spoke about the music industry and this country in particular when he said that 40 years ago, "America wasn't ready for Latin artists singing in English, even if they were Americans" ("The Resonance of Selena" by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, April 9). If that was the case, how do you explain Ritchie Valens and Santo and Johnny [in the late '50s], and Cannibal and the Headhunters, ? and the Mysterians, Sam the Sham and Vikki Carr [early- to mid-'60s]