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By Liz
Balmaseda
Listen to her
lyrics. They are a graffiti spray of raw energy, rebel ventings, and
unleashed passions. They bear the messages of a girl chafing against the
norms of society, wearing her desires like a navel tattoo, ready to
love, ready to risk it all, ready to fly.
This could lead you to believe that Shakira, the thready-voiced creator
and fervent interpreter of these lyrics, is the quintessential rockera,
a bohemian citizen of pop music's jagged edges. But make no assumptions
about the 22-year-old queen of rock latino. Don't search her songs for
ominous hints. There are no dark Courtney Love stories to be told here.
Yes, her music brandishes a woman-of-the-world authority; but at the end
of the day, after the last song is sung, she goes home to Mami and Papi.
"I am a walking contradiction. I am a cocktail
of elements that come from disparate and distant worlds. These elements,
however, do not fight one another. They coexist in peace. I am both
ethereal and terrestrial," Shakira says, weaving her hands
cobralike. "I don't fight myself. I accept all the contradictions
in me. And they accept one another."
In real life, Shakira is no angst-ridden rock chick. She's happy. She's
healthy. She is the embodiment of her name, which in Arabic means
"woman full of grace." She dwells in a blissful cocoon of
friends and family, including seven half-brothers and half-sisters.
There is no room for a love life, either. ("El galán de mi vida es
mi papá," she says.) She cherishes the discipline required for
stardom, the focus, the long hours of work. Unlike many artists of her
generation, she is not searching for roots or for an identity. She knows
quite clearly who she is, what she wants, how she's going to get it. And
when it comes, in shimmering bits, she rises to the occasion.
The sultry colombiana, who was named Latin Female
Artist of the Year at the 1998 World Music Awards, seems to be on an
ever-intensifying winning streak. Recently, within a few feverish
months, she watched her fourth album, Dónde Están los Ladrones? (Sony
Latin), reach the number one spot on Billboard's Latin 50; raked in a
Grammy nomination; signed a major deal with Pepsi for a Spanish-language
commercial; graced the cover of Time magazine's Latin American edition;
and embarked on a world promotional tour.
Now she is poised to break into the English-language
market with the help of her new producer, Emilio Estefan, Jr., and one
of her musical idols, Gloria Estefan. The couple has adopted their
fellow Miamian as if she were a little hermana. Gloria was so impressed
by the young trovadora that she agreed to translate the lyrics for
Shakira's English-language debut album. She also sang the translations
onto a practice tape to help Shakira with diction and phrasing. And she
was there in the studio with Shakira to offer moral support and language
tips. "She is just amazing," raves Gloria. "Shakira is an
old soul."
On January 28, on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, Shakira
sang in English for the first time. Gloria, who was the guest host that
day, declared that Shakira's lyrics reminded her of Janis Joplin. USA
Today has called her the "Latina Alanis Morissette." But
neither comparison begins to describe the spirits that dwell in Shakira
Mebarak, child of the coastal Barranquilla, born to a Lebanese jeweler
father who bequeathed to her a gift for writing and a doting mother who
taught her to read and write by age three.
Even as a tiny girl, Shakira seemed the consummate
artist, scribbling poems to her parents, learning the ancient dance
moves of her Arab ancestors, painting and sculpting, singing her prayers
at night. She made her first album at 13. It was as if she knew her
destiny, to break the mold of Latin American female pop singers by age
19. That's how old she was when she released her landmark recording,
Pies Descalzos, an eloquently written hybrid of rock, pop, and Latin
rhythms that sold 3.6 million copies worldwide.
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