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Aug. 28--Shakira made a dramatic entrance Friday before an ecstatic, flag-waving near-capacity crowd at the United Center -- not with one of her trademark belly dances, but with a kora solo by one of her musicians.
The African stringed instrument soon meshed with dark gothic synthesizer chords and a trip-hop beat, then surged into a big chorus that had the barefoot singer and the fans bouncing like giggling children on a trampoline.
It provided instant insight into the motivations of Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, the Colombian-born, 29-year-old child prodigy turned international pop star. By exploring a world of song, she refuses to become a cliche defined merely by the most celebrated belly button this side of the pubescent Britney. In 1999, that year's Latin crossover sensation, Ricky Martin, mounted his big arena tour and the thrills were strictly cheeseball; Martin was "Livin' La Vida Loca" atop a vintage T-Bird, and when he played the bongos he evoked Desi Arnaz on "I Love Lucy." It was difficult to take Martin as anything more than a fun-loving cartoon.
Martin has come and gone, but Shakira is showing more staying power. After enjoying massive success in Latin American in the '90s while still only a teenager, she broke through in North America with her first English-speaking album, "Laundry Service," in 2001, and now owns one of the summer's biggest hits, "Hips Don't Lie."
She closed her 90-minute performance with a confetti-showered version of that song, with her opening act, Wyclef Jean, serving as cheerleader and duet partner.
But before that celebratory finale, Shakira showed a musical determination that went beyond the cliches of Martin, Menudo, Jennifer Lopez and other Hispanic pop stars who have courted the Anglo market.
Her coed, multiculti seven-piece band was a mirror of her music, as she drew not only on homegrown influences (bossa nova from Brazil, cumbia from her native Colombia, tejano from Mexico), but Middle Eastern rhythms, African accents and Western rock. When she plays to the English-speaking audience, Shakira still sounds awkward; her deep Cher-like vibrato belted out '80s pop-metal and power ballads, with splashes of new-wave melodrama borrowed from the early Cure and Depeche Mode. She was far more persuasive singing in Spanish, her voice more flexible and playful, and the largely Hispanic audience sang almost every word with her.
She puffed on a harmonica and played some serviceable guitar, even pulling off a credible, undulating solo on "Don't Bother" straight from the sonic textbook of U2's The Edge, circa 1981. She strutted barefoot, at times approximating the blond hair-tossing fury of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant. Her no-frills staging emphasized the songs and the interplay of her band. The sole exceptions were "Obtener un Si," a simmering Brazilian-flavored ballad backed by a virtual orchestra silhouetted against a scrim, and "No," in which the sleeves of the singer's red dress billowed out into wings. As set pieces, these were strictly minor-league by the high-tech standards of Madonna or Christina Aguilera. But unlike those pop queens, Shakira radiated a joy in performing; she waded in with the fans for "Whenever, Wherever," and they returned the enthusiasm tenfold.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Shakira concert without a belly dance. "Ojos Asi" gave her the wiggle room she needed, but by then she'd established that her undulating hips were only a small part of what she does best.
gregkot@aol.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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