Shakira Language Analysis

When a strict nun rejected Shakira from the school choir because of her shrill vibrato, Shakira told a friend that, one day, she would have the last laugh when she became a world superstar (Salgado 2008). Neither the friend nor the nun could have imagined that years later, that shrill vibrato would catapult Shakira onto the very stage she promised to stand on, performing for leaders of state, Popes, and legions of fans worldwide. For Shakira, as her artistic empire expanded, so too did her linguistic and performative repertoire. By employing discourse analysis, this essay will trace the linguistic journey associated with Shakira’s musical history, beginning with some of her earlier songs—Ojos Así (Eyes Like Yours) [1998], Suerte (Wherever, Whenever) [2001], and Hips Don’t Lie [2005]—to some of her more recent work—Lo Hecho Está Hecho (Did It Again) [2009] and Addicted to You [2010]—in order to understand how language and performance of her music affect the ways in which listeners consume, interpret, and experience Shakira as a US-Colombian, a Latina, and a global citizen.

In addition, this essay will explore how the associations conjured by these performances redefine what it means to be a crossover success story not only in the U.S., but internationally as well.
I argue throughout the course of this essay that Shakira’s use of language and performance (and the intersections between them) powerfully position her at the center of Latinx musical culture in the U.S.

while simultaneously creating an othered persona that is neatly acceptable within the music industry’s messy understanding of hybrid artists. This othered persona is coveted by the U.S. dominant culture which perpetuates it onto the global market as the idealized standard for both crossover artists and U.S.-Colombians, more generally. I will refer to this phenomenon as the globalized crossover artist and seek to explore the ways in which it redefines and problematizes perceptions of crossover artists on a national and international scale. For Shakira, language is not just a lyrical tool, it is also a performative and structural tool that has the power to transcend borders of identities and

nations.
The Many Identities of Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born in 1977 in the coastal Colombian city of Barranquilla. As her very name implies, Shakira comes from a long line of multiple heritages. Her father was a Lebanese immigrant to the United States who later moved to Colombia where he met her mother, a Colombian of Spanish and Italian heritage (A&E Television Networks 2015). As an artist, Shakira has never shied away from this multiplicity of identity, invoking and honoring her Arabic and Latino influences in both her music and her signature belly-dancing performances. As Mónica Gontovnik argues, it is this multiplicity of identities that allows Shakira to transcend national boundaries, in turn affecting her “own localities in many ways” (Gontovnik 2010, 144). But Shakira’s multiplicity of identities was not a process she completed or refined overnight. Shakira explores her varied heritage in stages, an exploration that very much mirrors her artistic trajectory in ways ranging from topical choices to lyrical translations, code switching, and dance styles.
Language, Performance, and Production in Music
For decades, the music industry has been uncomfortable with conceptualizing and dealing with hybridity in musical production. In order to remedy this discomfort, the music industry employs a musical binary that categorizes artists and their music into either “white music” or “ethnic music,” with “ethnic” serving as a substitute for “black music” (Hernandez 2010). For many Latina artists like Shakira, neither mold fits their image or identity well. They are either left to reconcile their differences within “ethnic music” or (if they are light-skinned enough) forced to exist as a perpetual outsider inside a second-class access to “white music.” How, then, has an artist like Shakira managed to achieve such great success within an industry that provides few opportunities to do so for Latina artists? For many years, Shakira relied on the U.S. music industry in order to gain access to the strong Latinx market. But unlike artists such as Selena or Gloria Estefan, the U.S. market was not the final stop for Shakira; her final destination was the highly-coveted international music market (Callero 2008, Gontovnik 2010). In many ways, then, Shakira’s ascension to the global stage is the very thing which has prevented her from falling into the long-term musical binary trap. By essentially by-passing the U.S. music industry in the long-run, Shakira has been able to claim access to an elite global citizenship that does not frame her in black-white terms, but rather presents her as the ultimate “global mélange” of identities that belongs to no country and all countries at once (Callero 2008).
Any exploration into the linguistic impacts of Shakira’s music requires a brief overview of the role of translation in music. Generally, song translations accomplish three goals: they broaden the artist’s or group’s audience and fan base, they make lyrics and musical genres more accessible, and they enrich the listening experience for a listener or group of listeners (Susam-Sarajeva 2008). While these goals strongly influence the consumption side of music, they are the result of decisions rooted deeply on the production side (Storey 2003). For Shakira, the production decisions behind the translation of her music are one example of the linguistic choices that shape her public image and reception. In order to understand her complex images, it is important to consider the powerful linguistic forces at work in her music and why they come together in the ways they do. What is getting translated? Why? For whom? Who is making the decisions at play in the translation? Where is the line drawn between the artist and management? And so on. While this essay is not focused on specifically answering each of the questions, the concerns raised by them are important factors to consider when analyzing Shakira’s linguistic trajectory.
Shakira Conquers the World
Dominant U.S. popular culture defines crossover in explicitly linguistic terms whereby an artist is only capable of crossing into the U.S. music industry when they have successfully produced English music. The Anglo-conformity embedded in this idea not only marginalizes Latin American music production to a peripheral position, but also denies the complexities associated with musical production by Latinx artists who cater to listeners in both markets. In addition, the act of crossing over perpetuates a standard south-to-north ideology that racializes all Latinx musical artists as Spanish-speaking subjects who move from homogenous regional markets in order to search for greater success or popularity in the U.S. (Vargas 2012). A musical artist like Shakira calls for a reevaluation of the term crossover and the notions of success attached to it. While she may have traveled north from Colombia in search of success in the U.S.-Latino market, her musical journey involves far more than Anglo-centric movement or language. Her focus was always on the global music market—a place where a multiplicity of languages and identities goes far beyond English and involves movement across borders in all directions (Gontovnik 2010).
In order to understand how Shakira challenges the notions of a crossover artist, it is important to consider the beginning of her musical career. Her first two albums, Magia (1991) and Peligro (1993), were recorded completely in Spanish and released mainly in Colombia to very little success, putting Shakira’s musical career on the line. It was not until the release of Pies Descalzos (1995) that Shakira exploded into the Latin American music scene (Gontovnik 2010). Suddenly, her name was a staple in households across all of Latin America where her signature vibrato blared from radios and speakers. And not soon after, she captured the attention of the U.S. music industry, though it would take a few years before she became a complete icon in the Latinx music market.
Pies Descalzos marked the first album in which Shakira assumed large control over the writing, recording, mixing, and distribution of her music. She co-wrote nearly every song on the record, creating a personal and strong lyrical signature that remains commonplace in her music to this day. Soon after, she moved to the U.S. to work with the Estefans on her first English album, a move which put her even closer to her dream of global stardom (Gontovnik 2010). While this series of events may fit the traditional narrative of a crossover artist in more ways than one, such an explanation is too simplistic. Pies Descalzos was not merely a point which marked the final step before crossing over. For Shakira, Pies Descalzos was the point which marked the start of her crossover into the global, first by way of the U.S. Since her success, Shakira has refused to allow the re-release or re-recording of either Magia or Peligro, citing the “youthful immaturity” associated with these works (Burr 2003). But more realistically, Magia and Peligro harken back to a time before Shakira’s global conquest, marking a moment in her musical history which simply does not fit into the international narrative that she has crafted.
But where exactly does Shakira’s international narrative stem from and how can we conceptualize it? Nadia Celis Salgado offers a good starting point when she states that Shakira’s performance of blackness and caribeñidad in a public arena have helped further her worldwide appeal (Salgado 2008). I will take Salgado’s point even further and argue that Shakira’s performance of globalness—of which blackness and caribeñidad are strong elements—helps contextualize her as the idealized global crossover artist, citizen, and ambassador. Shakira’s performance of globalness is expressed through performative language as well as actual language which express a multiplicity of idealized identities and cultures.