Early lifeShakira 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 Spanish and Italian ancestry, and William Mebarak Chadid, an American of Lebanese descent. Her father also had eight children with his former wife.
Shakira means grateful or thankful (??????) in Arabic. Her second name, Isabel, is also that of her paternal grandmother meaning beautiful. 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.
Statue of Shakira in Barranquilla, Colombia.Between the ages of ten and thirteen Shakira was invited to various events in Barranquilla and gained some recognition in the area. It was at about this time that she met local theater producer Monica Ariza, who was impressed with her and as a result tried to help her career. During a flight from Barranquilla to Bogot?, Ariza convinced Sony Colombia executive Ciro Vargas to hold an audition for Shakira in a motel lobby. Vargas held Shakira in high regard and, returning to the Sony office, gave the cassette to a song and artist director. However, the director was not overly excited and thought Shakira was something of a lost cause. Vargas, not daunted, was still convinced that Shakira had talent, and set up an audition in Bogot?. He arranged for Sony Colombia executives to arrive at the audition, with the idea of surprising them with Shakira's performance. She performed three songs for the executives and impressed them enough for her to be signed to record three albums.
Shakira's debut album, Magia, was recorded with Sony Music in 1991, when she was only fourteen years old. The album did not fare well commercially, selling less than one thousand copies. After the poor acclaim of Magia, Shakira's label urged her back into the studio to release a follow up with more hit songs, to give the album potential. The album Peligro was released in 1993, but Shakira was not pleased with the final result. The album was better received than Magia, though it was also considered a commercial failure, due to Shakira's refusal to advertise it. Although little known outside of her native Colombia, Shakira was invited to perform at Chile's Vi?a del Mar International Song Festival in February 1993. The festival gave aspiring Latin American singers a chance to perform their songs, and the winner was then chosen by a panel of judges. Shakira performed the ballad Eres (You Are) and won the trophy for third place. One of the judges who voted for her to win was then 20-year-old Ricky Martin. Shakira then decided to take a hiatus from recording so that she could graduate from high school.
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