Besides, she added, the way the music sounds is more important than what she looks like.īergara said public service drew her to City Hall, where she started working five years ago. That’s a good sign to Bergara, who said she’s always wanted to be a musician and hopes to use the Selena act to eventually transition into a solo career. But now we go to shows and people will yell my name at me.” “When it first started, people, of course, were calling me Selena. “Now I look the way I do at City Hall,” she said of dressing up. So she started playing Selena as Stephanie. There’s Como La Flor in California, which has a big enough repertoire to play for hours, and Los Chicos de 512, in Arizona, which Bergara says is her favorite.Īfter about a year, on a particularly hot day, Bergara decided it was too much to put on a sequined bustier and do up her hair. There’s Texas City’s Amanda Solis, who “looks mind-blowingly like Selena” and New York’s Genessa Escobar who “is such a trailblazer because she’s making Tejano music, a music based in Texas, in New York, and she’s doing it right,” Bergara said. RELATED: Remembering Selena: Tejano music star’s legacy lives on 20 years after her death The group shares a mission with other Selena tribute groups around the country, whom Bergara gushes about when asked. The LGBT community proved to be particularly enthusiastic fans, she said. Bidi Bidi Banda - a play on Selena’s big hit “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and the Spanish word for a brass band - was born.īergara learned quickly that Selena fans would let her know when she was doing it wrong, whenever a run on a song didn’t land exactly like the recorded version. “I don’t think the crowd understood it was a one-time thing,” he said.Īnd so they kept going. Afterward, the inquiries about future shows and private events kept coming. Rocky Reyna, whose own band Este Vato usually kept him busy, agreed to play bass. She thought it would be fun to dress up as the late singer. I was 8.”īergara expected it to be a single event when, in 2014, she pitched the idea to a few friends to do a Selena number for Austin’s Pachanga Latino Music Festival. “I saw her and I was like: I want to do that. “I was watching the Tejano Music Awards in 1994 - it was when Selena had on the red bustier with the crisscross stripes in the front,” Bergara said. She remembers the exact moment she fell for the singer. That’s huge validation for Bergara, 31, an Austin native whose parents, a cross-country trucker and a Del Valle High School secretary, raised her on Selena. Next week, the group sets off on its biggest national tour yet, which includes dates at the Mandalay Bay House of Blues in Las Vegas, Slim’s in San Francisco and Union Club in Los Angeles. “Playing in front of huge crowds like we do, the energy is so high - it’s unusual to experience that for local musicians,” he said. But the size and intensity of the Selena-loving crowds blew him away. Lead guitarist Rene Chavez, who also plays in a cumbia band, was initially somewhat cynical about playing covers for a tribute band, he said. Selena’s fandom consistently brings hundreds to its shows. The City Council Chambers is not, by Bidi Bidi Banda’s standards, a large venue. WATCH: City worker’s Selena tribute band is a dream come true But this time, Bergara, an employee in the music division of Austin’s Economic Development Office, was playing for co-workers. A standing-room-only crowd filled the Austin City Council Chambers June 22 as Stephanie Bergara stepped forward during the council’s weekly live music break to become a Texas icon: Selena.īergara, who has the name of her alter ego tattooed across her forearm in red, has spent three years headlining Bidi Bidi Banda, paying tribute to Tejano music trailblazer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, who was murdered in Corpus Christi in 1995.
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