Sensational Shakira

Songwriter performer Shakira has already conquered the world at the age of 25.  Shakira is the winner of a Grammy® and two Latin Grammy’s®.  Her latest album alone has sold more than 10.5 million copies.  Shakira is the result of her own creation – she writes and produces her own songs.  Today, she’s considered one of the best female lyricist in Latin America.  Shakira has earned the admiration of the likes of Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Colombia’s greatest living writer.  She has even been blessed by the Pope, who granted her an audience in the Vatican. Shakira is truly phenomenal.  

 

Back when Shakira was a little girl, her mother, Nydia Ripoll, believed her daughter would one day become a great author. But it was her instinctive response to the sound of the doumbek, the traditional Arab drum used to accompany belly dancers, that signaled what her true calling would be.

 

Being of Lebanese descent, Shakira’s father, Don William Mebarak, took his daughter to a local Middle Eastern restaurant one fateful night, where Shakira first heard the doumbek. She began to wriggle in her seat, she recalls, experiencing, “a natural instinct to move my hips and twirl my belly to its sound”.

 

Ever since, a passion for dancing and performing has consumed Shakira.  This passion, along with her magnetic personality, has captivated the public around the world.  Today, Shakira’s unique writing style, her supreme sensuality, and her spectacular voice have made her a worldwide tour de force. 

 

 

First steps to fame

 

At the tender age of eight, Shakira tried out for the school choir but was rejected and told that her vibrato was too strong. Her schoolmates teased her and said that her voice sounded like the bleating of a goat. Too shy to sing after that experience, she began to write song lyrics instead, and she penned her first song Tus Gafas Oscuras or Your Dark Glasses, as a tribute to her father, who often wore sunglasses.

 

Growing up in a Colombian port city called Barranquilla, Shakira says she was 12 when she was moved by the guitar solo in Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. Every time she heard it, she said, it gave her a strange sensation in her stomach. She played that song over and over just so she could relive that sensation.

 

A year later, when she turned 13, Shakira signed her first three-record deal with Sony Music Colombia. Her first album, Magia (Magic), consisted mostly of ballads. The breakthrough came four years later, with her 1995 album, Pies Descalzos (Bare Feet), which was a hit in Spain and throughout Latin America, including Brazil, where the album sold over one million copies.  Her next album, Dónde Están Los Ladrones? (Where are the Thieves?), produced by Shakira and executive produced by Emilio Estefan, established her as the major force behind Latin pop-rock.  The album went multi-platinum in the U.S., Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Central America, Mexico and platinum in Spain. 

 

 

Enter DeMann

 

Freddy DeMann, the man who introduced Madonna to the world and helped launch Michael Jackson’s solo career, is now backing Shakira. He became her manager in 2000, and says he was so certain of his new client’s potential appeal in the United States that he came out of retirement to steer her career in this new direction. “Shakira wanted to be a world artist,” said DeMann. “The way to do that is to record in English.” 

 

DeMann had never heard of Shakira until he caught her performance by chance while channel surfing on television. “Who is that girl?” he recalls asking himself. “Wow, she just mesmerized me.” DeMann felt sure Shakira’s electrifying performances would captivate English-speaking audiences as they did her Latino fans.

 

 

Shakira in any language 

 

Though by the year 2000 Shakira was already enjoying wide fame in Latin America and a few European countries, the release of her first English Album Laundry Service in 2001 turned her into a true international superstar.  Her album became a big success and her sexy, bare-bellied performance for the video of her hit single, Whenever, Wherever mesmerized audiences around the world.

 

Laundry Service is a collection of pop love songs with original lyrics, catchy melodies and rock guitars – Shakira’s favorite instrument. The album was #l in more than 30 countries, and was the #l selling album in Europe for 2002, according to the Pan-European Music and Media Charts. The first single from the album, Whenever, Wherever was the #l most played track of the year on European radio and the #2 top seller on the Eurochart Hot l00 Singles of 2002. 

 

Shakira’s music draws upon her Colombian upbringing, her Lebanese roots, and her love of rock and roll. The Arabic influence can be seen with each gyration, in the Middle Eastern melodies and the little vocal arabesques that are part of Shakira’s proudly innovative singing style. 

 

Shakira perfected her English so that she could write her own lyrics for Laundry Service, which reflect real-life relationships just as her Spanish work does. Her songs, reflecting both romantic devotion and a spirited independence, really strike a chord with young people. “It was important to me to not just translate my songs from Spanish to English, but rather try to figure out a way of writing new songs in English that had my heart and my essence in them,” she said.

 

“Listening to the radio, I realized how often English love songs just sound the same,” said Shakira. “I tried to escape the typical metaphors that come up again and again. Think about it – behind all the love songs in the world, it’s always the same sentiment, but there are a million ways to express it.”

 

In fact, her album title, Laundry Service, is the perfect example. Not many of us would automatically connect a dreaded domestic chore with romance. To Shakira, however, it represents being in love and feeling cleansed and renewed. “I was in the middle of falling in love and I remember trying to describe it to a friend of mine, saying that it’s like going through the laundromat and getting full service,” she explained.

 

Shakira is extremely proud of her accomplishment. “This album was quite a challenge for me,” she confessed. “I was born into the Spanish language and was raised in Spanish.  I live in Spanish, love in Spanish, and translating all those feelings in English is definitely one of the most interesting things that has happened in my career so far.”

 

Since its release less than two years ago, Laundry Service has sold more than 10.5 million copies worldwide, but Shakira isn’t counting. “Even if I only sold 1000 records in America, I feel as if I’ve already succeeded because I’ve accomplished the most important challenge – to write and produce a whole album in another language and be totally happy with the result,” she enthused.

 

 

Holding on to heritage    

 

Shakira is often described as a walking, living, breathing, singing contradiction. “I was born and raised in Colombia, but I listened to bands like Led Zeppelin, the Cure, the Police, the Beatles and Nirvana,” she said. “I was so in love with that rock sound, but at the same time because my father is of l00% Lebanese descent, I am devoted to Arabic tastes and sounds, too.”

 

Shakira is half Lebanese and half Colombian, the daughter of jewelers who brought up a sparkling jewel themselves. Her father’s Arabic background greatly influenced her.  Today, Shakira still considers her father as her superhero and one of her greatest inspirations. 

 

Shakira has not left her Lebanese identity behind. Because her big U.S. push came in the wake of the September 11 attacks, some predicted that she would be forced to downplay the Arab influences in her songs such as in Ojos Asi, which originally appeared on her Spanish album, Dónde Están Los Ladrones?.  Instead, performer and friend Gloria Estefan translated the song into English. The song, retitled Eyes Like Yours, was included in Laundry Service and became indeed another big hit. 

 

Never one to shy away from an issue, Shakira is successfully using her current Tour of the Mongoose concerts to deliver an anti-war message. Between songs, video screens show silent-movie-style titles urging love and idealism. And in Octavo Dia (Eighth Day), a song about the absence of God and the mess humans made after Creation, the video screen shows a chess game between U.S. President George Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, both of them marionettes manipulated by death, followed by scenes of war and, finally, a white dove.

 

“My fans have seen the external aspect of me as an artist,” Shakira said. “They’ve seen me shaking my butt around. They’ve seen me on covers of magazines. I think I’ve gotten their attention. But now it’s time to make this relationship deeper and deliver messages of love rather than hatred.”

 

Shakira was surprised that she quickly became a sex symbol in the U.S. and Britain, and was featured on the covers of men’s magazines. “For a second, I was like, ‘Hmmm, really? Am I that sexy?’” she said.  “Of course I enjoyed it. I felt flattered. It was fun at first, but then after a while it just gets boring.”

 

 

On the road

 

Shakira still lives and travels with her retired parents, who she refers to as her “guardian angels”. The Mebaraks still own a home in Colombia, but Miami is now their primary residence. While on the road, she is always accompanied by her father, mother or half-brother, Tony Mebarak. 

 

Shakira in Arabic means “full of grace” or “full of gratitude”. If her name could be found in an English dictionary, the definition would probably read: rocker trapped in the body of a pop artist, sex symbol and advocate of world peace. When asked to describe herself, she simply replies, “I think my music says it all.” So get ready… Shakira is coming to say it all in Lebanon this year.