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Shakira · S1 E1
February 2, 1977
Born Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll in Barranquilla, Colombia. Lebanese father, Colombian mother. The girl who writes her first song at eight and belly dances for anyone who'll watch
Barranquilla, Colombia, 1985. An eight-year-old girl sits at a keyboard composing a song about her father's dark sunglasses, and she has never had a music lesson in her life.
Shakira, Ojos Así (Official Music Video, 1999). Arabic vocals, belly dancing, and the collision of Lebanese heritage with Latin rock. Everything that starts with a four-year-old dancing on a restaurant table and a father's oud records arrives here.
Barranquilla, Colombia
A Caribbean port city at the mouth of the Magdalena River, known as the "Golden Gate of Colombia." Home to the second-largest carnival in the world, the birthplace of cumbia and vallenato, and the city where Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born on February 2, 1977.
The Mebaraks
William Mebarak Chadid is Lebanese-Colombian, born in New York to Lebanese immigrants who settled in Barranquilla when he was a boy. His wife Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado is Colombian of Spanish and Italian descent. Their daughter grows up in a household where Arabic oud music and Colombian cumbia come through the same walls.
“I spent most of my childhood dreaming about becoming a singer.”
— Shakira
TAP TO REVEAL: What does the name "Shakira" mean, and why did her father choose it?
The First Song
The dark glasses hide grief: William's eldest son from a previous marriage was killed in a motorcycle accident. Eight-year-old Shakira processes her father's pain the only way she can, sitting at a keyboard and writing a song called "Tus Gafas Oscuras." From that point on, she writes every lyric and melody on every album she ever releases.
What was the subject of the first song Shakira ever wrote?
Antología, Shakira (1995)
A ballad from Pies Descalzos that strips away the production and leaves just the voice and the lyric. Written when she was barely seventeen, "Antología" became one of the most beloved songs in Latin American pop and the clearest early proof that the girl who wrote her first song at eight would grow into one of the finest songwriters in the Spanish-speaking world.
When Shakira is small, her father's jewelry business collapses overnight. He takes her to a public park to show her something she will never forget. Next: the children with no shoes, the moment that breaks her heart open, and the mission that drives everything Shakira builds beyond music.
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