Shakira Bio

 

The story of her life

22 years ago, on February 2nd, in the private hospital of "Asunción de Barranquilla", to the world came a plump baby, with curly hair, thick eyebrows, and big eyes. Being the only child of her mother and the last child of her father, for this she became the pampered of the family.
Her father, William Mebarak (arabic descendant), and her mother, Nidia Ripoll, agreed in calling her Shakira, that in arabic means WOMAN FULL OF GRACE and in indian, GODDESS OF LIGHT. Her childhood took place on a flat of El limoncito, a middle class neighborhood in Barranquilla. To this place her half-brothers went, sons of William Mebarak's first marriage, to play with the little girl, who was characterized for being very clever. Shakira was brought up between books, precious stones, and music. Her father, apart from being a writer, had one of the most prosperous jewelry shops of the city, in the San Blas neighborhood. Soon she showed interest for music and writing.
When she turned 18 months, she surprised everybody by knowing the alphabet, at the age of 3 she knew the numbers and how to read, and at the age of four she was prepared for primary school. Even so, the stiffness of the system didn't let her enter school. The following year she was subjected to some academic exams and the specialists agreed in that Shakira was a gifted child. At first, her mother thought she would be a painter, because she spent hours drawing, then she deducted that she would be a writer, because at the age of 5 the composed verses; at school they said she was going to be a dancer, because every civic friday she danced the belly dancing in front of her classmates. It was at the age of 8 when her parents saw her a flair for singing. At that age she composed the song TUS GAFAS OSCURAS, in reference to the glasses of don William. Feeling an inclination for arts wasn't enough to distract her from playing like any other child.
"I remember I played 'cops and robbers' with my neighbors, I was the chief"
Nowadays she says that relationships with men at a very early age offered her enough character to deal with them, because in her career she has to work with many men. Apart from talented, she was beautiful and that's how they recognized her in the contest "Atlantic Girl" in which she took part and came out as vicereine. When she turned 10 years old her parents became her managers because contracts to dance arabic dances started coming to her. Her friends remember her with a coin in the navel. Then her parents stimulated her to take part in the singing contest "Vivan los niños" and she won. From then on she took all the prizes of every festival that she took part in, in Barranquilla. Some years later, the journalist Monica Ariza introduced her to Ciro Vargas, a Sony Music executive. She sang a capela for him in one of the corridors of El Prado Hotel and he was so amazed that he hired her at once. Since that day, they combined her school tasks and kid games with the recording of her first cd, MAGIA.
She studied in La Enseñanza de Barranquilla and although she was the artist of the school, they didn't let her enter the chorus because, according to one of her teachers, her voice sounded like the shriek of a young goat. It was a bit hard for Shakira that she was being slighted, but little by little, she was becoming a star. At the age of 13 she had her first love. It was a neighbour called Oscar Pardo, to whom she intrusted her desire to become a professional singer. When she turned 14 she was already a known artist in her city and her name was starting to be heard throughout the rest of the country. By that period she represented Colombia in the Viña del Mar festival, where she won the "Silver Torch" for the song ERES, that she had written. There, she met Ricky Martin, who was part of the jury and voted for her. Later, in an interview, he would say that only a few times had he seen a little girl with so much talent. She was also about to represent her country in the OTI festival but she wasn't allowed to do so because she wasn't 16 years old. At the age of 15 she recorded her second album, Peligro, from which only the song TU SERAS LAS HISTORIA DE MI VIDA was known because, in general, the album wasn't successful. At the request of the artist, Peligro wasn't promoted any more and she decided to wait until releasing a new album in agreement with her essence, with what she thought about life. The singer was in trouble because her contract was for 3 albums and, if the other didn't work, she could possibly be canceled. It seemed to be impossible to achieve sales and success with ballads, so she was proposed to sing tropical music: Salsa or Merengue, but her stubborness was her best weapon. She didn't give up and went on with her desire of singing Pop-Rock. When she finished secondary school she decided to move to Bogotá, but the fear of leaving her city, her friends, and even her boyfriend made her hesitate.
Many reporters convinced her that only in Bogotá would she find success. As she was having a crisis with her musicians, she packed her luggage and arrived to the capital city with her mother. She adapted herself easily to the new life, to the initial economic depression that obliged her to live in an university residence with her mother.
The first thing she did when she installed herself in Bogotá was to visit Sony Music and TV GUIDE magazine, and thanks to the interview that they published in TV GUIDE, she received a call from CENPRO offering her the main role in THE OASIS. During the same time, the magazine was planning to make the best butt contest of the colombian TV, and she herself and her press chief asked to include her in the candidates list.
The magazine made her a photo session where she showed her perfect curves and thanks to these photographs she won and her popularity grew.
When the magazine turned one year old, it made a big party in which it was announced that she was the winner and also she was given a prize as best national artist.
Around that time, she was already living in a comfortable apartment rented in the north of Bogotá that today is her property and she was the girlfriend of Oscar Ulloa, a young man that moved from Barranquilla to Bogotá to be next to her, but the romance soon ended.
In 1994, she presented herself for the first time in front of a huge audience in Bogotá that included artists and reporters. It was in the ceremony of the TV y Novelas awards, were she was competing with Alejandra Guzmán and Paulina Rubio. Sony Music didn't trust her very much so she went out on stage alone, without musicians nor dancers and even so, at the end of the show, the general commentary was that our artist in vocal quality had beaten the other big foreign artists that had had an orquestra and a coreography. This was where Patricia Telles, her actual manager, saw her. Sony had already thought in cancelling her contract when it planned to release a compilation and they called her to include one song of hers. In a hurry, she composed the lyrics of the song DONDE ESTAS CORAZON, in a taxi on the way from her house to Sony Music. And that was the song that played endlessly on the radio stations, bringing her to stardom. Since then her success was uncontainable. Then, she went to the US where she stayed several months with her producer Luis Fernando Ochoa, working on Pies Descalzos, a project that she released on October 6, 1995, in a modest way in the National Theater La Castellana with doors opened for anyone to enter. That night she amazed the assistants although people like Julio Sanchez Cristo said then that the album was a plagiarism of THE PRETENDERS and some other anglo-saxon artists. In spite of that, the album started to be sold like hot bread. Shakira started her international tour while touring the continent with her "Bare feet" while all her songs were ranked number one in the rankings. Her house stopped being in Barranquilla and Bogota because she lived in airplanes. During that time she was the girlfriend of Gustavo Gordillo, an ex member of the group POLIGAMIA. Their relationship only lasted 5 months because of their continuous trips and they were not able to have a relationship. That year she opened the Viña del Mar festival and when she came back she could not believe it: She had sold more than one million cds, something never seen in Colombia, and Sony Music had to invent a new prize to award her. In the special ceremony where all the reporters were invited, she was given the just created prize called: The diamond prism. Osvaldo Rios went there to meet her. She had sold millions of cds in the world and she already had the prize of being the most awarded national artist, and she became a celebrity. Steven Spielberg called her to audition for the female role for Zorro, with Antonio Banderas. She wasn't chosen but having gone there was a big event. The happiness had its sad passage with the death of many people at the concert because of the resale of tickets for her first big concert in Barranquilla, the place where she was born, something that she prefers not to remember and when she does, her words become cut off because she hadn't wanted something like that to happen. She got to know about the tragedy when she arrived at the hotel and the ones who knew her assured that if she had known it before she wouldn't have sung. It affected her in such a strong way that she even thought about leaving her career. When 1996 ended she was chosen as the woman and artist of the year by comunication means and street polls. And it wasn't the least, because she became the first Colombian singer to make her music be heard in far lands like Japan, and drove the brazilians crazy with her songs, for this she had to record her albums in portuguese to please her fans. In the Iberian Peninsula, her songs were heard on buses and in houses. In January of 1997, her fans shook when they knew she was dating the actor Osvaldo Rios, who was in Colombia recording a soap opera. She went with him to the Billboard and Lo Nuestro awards, taking 3 awards in the first one and two in the second one. Osvaldo also went with her to her tour through Brasil, where Shakira offered lots of concerts, beating Enrique Iglesias, Luis Miguel and Alanis Morissette in popularity. Then she went to Europe and caused the same sensation. On October 10th, 1997, two years after releasing PIES DESCALZOS, for the last time she sang all the songs of her successful album in Bogotá, where she ended the big tour. Although only a few knew it, at this time her 8 month relation with Osvaldo Rios had ended. The musical balance was simply amazing: TV y Novelas, Eres, Billboard and Lo Nuestro, are some of the awards she got, besides the 22 golden discs, 55 platinum discs and the diamond prism. Personally she achieved one of her dreams: That the Pope Juan Pablo II received her. Then came real chaos in Miami in her center of musical operations because everybody wanted to listen to her fourth album. So much hope scared her, because everybody expected her to surpass what she had done with PIES DESCALZOS. To make matters worse, she didn't have many ideas in her head about her next songs because someone in the El Dorado airport had stolen her a bag where she had the handwritings of the songs she had written up to that time. The news around her started when she was given the WORLD MUSIC AWARD in Monaco when the president of the Republic, Ernesto Samper, named her "ambassador of the good will power". But the award she received with the biggest satisfaction was the "Congo de Oro del Carnaval de Barranquilla". There she sang "Te Olvidé" next to the big Joe Arroyo, and by doing that she was achieving one of the biggest dreams of her life. "It was like receiving a Grammy". Then came weeks and weeks writing and looking for a producer for her album till Emilio Estefan, who had seen her in the Lo Nuestro awards, expressed his desire for producing her album. She thought she couldn't assume the artistic production of her work and Estefan conviced her that she could. So, Shakira confined herself in a recording studio to add grey matter to her songs. During that time, a cover of the latin american version of Time magazine surprised the colombians in a great way. It was an article about the boom of the new rocker era and Shakira was the central figure. The most expected hour arrived when she released DONDE ESTAN LOS LADRONES? As it had never happened with a national artist, it's release was in Miami and Sony Music didn't skimp on money and invited lots of reporters from the world to interview her. When she promoted the album in Bogotá, by the end of September, she cried affectively when receiving a quintuple platinum disc because just in the first day she had sold 300.000 cds. The fears that her album wouldn't work had vanished. She returned to the first place in the music rankings in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, first with Ciega, sordomuda and then with Tu. Her fame deserved an invitation to the WhiteHouse to dine with president Clinton and one nomination for the Grammy, in the Best Latin Rock Artist category. It seemed as Shakira had everything by now and wouldn't need more, but she doesn't think like that. "I've got lots of dreams of all the colors and sizes to achieve. One of them is singing someday in Libano, the land of her paternal grandparents, another, falling in love with a man to live an eternal and unconditional love and go on crossing the frontiers, not to be a simple artist of one day, but someone that remains in memory, even after death".