Shakira << shah KEE rah >> (1977-…) is a Colombian singer and songwriter. She has become one of the most popular performers in the history of Latin American popular music. She is also a musician, dancer, and record producer. Shakira has won a number of Grammy, Latin Grammy, and other awards for her music.
Shakira was born on Feb. 2, 1977, in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her mother was Colombian, and her father was from the United States and of Lebanese ancestry. Her full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll. She began composing songs at the age of 8 and soon was creating her own dances, especially belly dances that reflect her father’s Lebanese heritage. Belly dancing became a feature of Shakira’s live performances and videos.
Shakira recorded her first album, Magia (Magic), in 1991. She gained fame throughout Latin America in 1995 for her third album, Pies Descalzos (Bare Feet). By the late 1990’s, Shakira’s popularity had spread to Europe and North America. She became a star in the English-speaking pop market with the success of her first English-language album, Laundry Service (2001). This album includes such hit singles as “Whenever, Wherever,” “Underneath Your Clothes,” “Objection (Tango),” and “The One.” Shakira’s later significant albums include Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (Oral Fixation Vol. 1; 2005), which contains the hit single “La Tortura (The Torture)”; and El Dorado (The Golden One; 2017). In 2022, she released the hit single “Monotonía (Monotony).”
In the mid-1990’s, Shakira established the Pies Descalzos Foundation (Bare Feet Foundation), a charity she created to help Colombian child victims of poverty and violence. In 2003, the United Nations appointed her a global good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). In 2013 and 2014, she was a coach on the American singing-competition television show “The Voice.”
