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Monday, October 1, 2007

Shakira

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll (born February 2, 1977), known simply as Shakira is a Colombian-Lebanese singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, record producer, dancer and occasional actress who has been a major figure in the pop music scene of Latin America since the mid-1990s. In 2001, she broke through into the English-speaking world with the release of Laundry Service, which sold over fifteen million copies worldwide. A two-time Grammy Award-winning and eight-time Latin Grammy Award-winning artist, Shakira is the highest-selling Colombian artist of all time, having sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. She is also the only artist from South America to reach the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100, the Australian ARIA chart, the United World Chart and the UK Singles Chart. Shakira is also known for having an IQ of 140.

According to the United World Chart, Shakira is as of 2007 the fourth most successful artist so far from the 2000s. She is also the only artist to have two songs in the top ten of the most successful singles since 1999. Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born on February 2 1977 in Barranquilla, Colombia. She is the only child of Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado, a Colombian of Catalan-Italian descent, and William Mebarak Chadid, an American of Lebanese descent. Her father also had eight children with his former wife. Shakira means "grateful" or "thankful" (شاكِرة) in Arabic. Her second name, Isabel, is also that of her paternal grandmother. She spent much of her youth in Barranquilla, a city located in northern Colombia.

Shakira wrote her first poem, entitled "La Rosa De Cristal" ("The Glass Rose") when she was only four years old. After receiving a typewriter as a gift, she began to write poems constantly. Her poems eventually evolved into songs. At the age of eight, after an older brother was killed in a motorcycle accident, Shakira became inspired to write her first song. When Shakira was four, her father took her to a local Middle Eastern restaurant, where Shakira first heard the doumbek, a traditional drum used in Arabic music and which typically accompanied belly dancing.

Before she knew it, Shakira was dancing barefoot on the table, as restaurant patrons responded by clapping enthusiastically. It was then that Shakira said she knew she wanted to be a performer. She enjoyed singing for schoolmates and teachers (and even the nuns) at her Catholic school but in the second grade was rejected for the school choir because her vibrato was too strong. The music teacher told her that she sounded "like a goat". At school, she says she had been known as "the belly dancer girl", as she would demonstrate a number she learned every Friday at school. "That's how I discovered my passion for live performance," she says.

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