Horiwood's Blog

When you’re a global humanitarian pop star, like Shakira, who can write a US$45 million check for Peruvian and Nicaraguan aid and relief,  everyone suddenly wants to know how you can afford to do this.

Vanity Fair so much wanted a piece of Shakira’s eclectic taste sensibility so much that they wrote this about the Labanese-Colombian singer/poet/songwriter’s latest musical offering: “From Indian influences to a klezmer-inflected clarinet solo, Shakira’s new album, She Wolf, is as meltingly multi-culti as the Lebanese-Colombian singer herself. But Michael Roberts went 100 percent Parisian, photographing Shakira in this season’s Dior, Chanel, and Gaultier, with a touch of Cartier bling. The author, meanwhile, finds himself oddly charmed by the way she howls.” [Note to Vanity Fair: You sound so white right now].

That’s just a little bit ‘melting pot-ish’ for a girl who just knows how to give and then everything else works out in the end. Conducting her interview by phone from her home in the Bahama’s with Vanity Fair in New York, Shakira can’t understand what the fuss about her ‘exoticness’ is about either. She simply says of her new album She Wolf, being released in October:

“I have music from India, the Middle East, dancehall, a little bit of Colombian influences. I always loved disco, so the new record has disco elements, but also house—it’s electropop.” 

There’s only one secret to being as successful AND sweet as Shakira. The secret is to give. Unless you do that, you will always wonder, like Vanity Fair how someone can be so successful. You may make it about their exoticness and talent, but the truth is that its about their generosity of spirit. People who give like Shakira are giants of humanity on this earth. We love this girl.

To read more, go here. Shakira is know as a Latin superstar. The truth is, she’s half Lebanese. The Lebanese descend from a longline of merchant traders, who traded across the moutain tops of various countries in the Middle East for centuries. When they settled in Lebanon, their Middle Eastern sensibilities were invaded by  both the English and the French. Therefore their biz savvy skills to trade across nations became fused with  the  best taste in Europe. That’s Shakira’s X factor as a Latino star. One of her  greatest  role models growing up was the Lebanese  singer Fairuz ( نهاد حداد) who sung in Arabic and is still regarded as one of the greatest singers of the Arab world. Notice how Fayrouz singing below, sounds like how Shakira sings?  Shakira is the Fairuz of America. But America is not her main source of income. Clever!