The Smithsonian Institution has been adding some Latin flavor to their mix for a while now, and Selena fans couldn’t be happier! The Tex-Mex Queen’s work with Coca Cola was recently added as part of an exhibit at the National Museum of American History, and now for extra kicks, the Smithsonian has also managed to unearth a rare video of an old interview she did for Tejano USA, and decided to share it with everyone on their Youtube channel.
The footage had been lost for at least 20 years, but during the Smithsonian’s efforts to update their archives, they came across an old TV camera with a tape inside, that was donated to the museum’s Spanish-language television project, by Univision, the parent company of San Antonio KWEX-TV, Channel 41, who conducted the interview with Selena way back in 1994. God bless historians and their obsession to digitize everything!
The production manager, who also directed the segment with our queen, told the museum that after Selena Quintanilla tragically passed away in 1995, he started looking everywhere for the video, but unfortunately he had already misplaced it. Apparently he had he had wrongfully labeled the camera with the tape still inside and it was stored elsewhere out of the manager’s reach.
On the video we can see that Selena Quintanilla (For those of you who thought we were talking about Selena Gomez) is being interviewed at the Hemisfair Park in San Antonio Texas, just before the singer performed at the “Texas Live” Music Festival sponsored by Coca Cola.
In the video Selena and the interviewer talked about her historic Grammy win in 1994 for her album Live! that won in the Best Mexican/American Album category, becoming the first Tejano artist to do so. During the chat we can see how humble and good-hearted the artist was, as she talks about how the Grammy staff workers didn’t allow the then 22-year-young singer to bring her camera backstage so she could take pictures with the other artists.
On the bilingual interview, the singer also talked about her first steps as an actress, on the celebrated Mexican soap opera, ‘Dos Mujeres Un Camino’, where Selena who was only expected to do a cameo, impressed the producers so much, that they had to give her three more episodes on the show.
It’s been 22 years since Selena left this world, but not a single one goes by where she doesn’t gain new fans and inspires love through her heartfelt music.