On April 8, 1951 Joan Sebastian was born in the town of Julianta, Mexico as José Manuel Figueroa. His parents were Marcos Figueroa and Celia Figueroa. At the age of eleven he wrote his first love song. Unfortunately, Joan was sent to a seminary, intending to become a priest, at the age of fourteen by his father’s orders. By the time …show more content…
In 2006 Trigo Figueroa, one of Joan’s sons, was shot and killed when he tried to control a crowd after one of his father’s concerts. After four years, in 2010 Jose Sebastian Figueroa, Joan’s second son, was shot and killed during a bar fight. The fight broke out when one of the guards didn’t let him in. Things got so intense that the guard eventually took out his gun and shot him twice. These two deaths really affected Joan and his music. He would occasionally write songs about them and they would actually end up getting nominated for many awards.
In the year of 1999 he was diagnosed with bone cancer. The chemo therapy treatment that he had been doing helped him overcome it. Unfortunately the cancer came back in 2007 and yet again in 2012. The cancer had gone away in both of those times. In 2014, the cancer came back for the fourth time so he retired from the “jaripeos”, which is basically singing on a horse in a rodeo. He still wanted to be in the music business so he did not retire from that. Joan ended up losing his battle to cancer on July 13, 2015 at his ranch in Juliantla, Guerrero, Mexico (Tinoco