KEY POINTS:
There was a defining moment in the life of Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, one which both her army of devoted fans and her impressive publicity machine agree indicated the world had a huge star on its hands.
Aged just 7, Shakira was accompanying her family to a Middle
Eastern restaurant in her home town in the steamy Colombian port city of Barranquilla.
As the Arabic drums started to pulse and the restaurant's in-house belly dancers took to the stage, up leapt the little girl, overtaken by a "natural instinct", she later recalled, "to move my hips and twirl my belly to the sound of the doumbek. I fell in love with the sensation of being on stage".
The sultry Latin singer-dancer is now beating another drum, calling on the world's governments to provide basic schooling for the 300 million young people missing out on any kind of formal lessons.
She has enlisted Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, World Bank president Robert Zoellick and United States congressional politicians to raise awareness for the bipartisan Education For All Act.
The act calls on President George Bush to address the challenge of providing children across the globe with access to equal education.
Brown has become increasingly aware of the stardust that celebrities can sprinkle over subjects often considered too worthy or dull to penetrate the consciousness of the general public.
He has bonded with Bono over African debt, discussed Darfur with George Clooney (the man his wife, Sarah, would choose to play him in a film of his life) while talking breast cancer recovery with Kylie Minogue.
But in Shakira, Brown is hitching his wagon to someone who shares not only his famous sense of moral purpose and extraordinary workrate - she regularly notches up 40,000 air miles a month and can talk her way through 40 interviews a day - but also embodies the Prime Minister's admiration for allowing talent to flourish.
Those who write off Shakira as some kind of Hispanic Britney Spears are very much mistaken, says Phil Stanton, a co-founder of the World Music Network and an authority on Colombian music.
"There is a real musical intelligence in her work. She has some very good ideas and a real musical brain. She has been a recording artist for many years. She started out as a child star and has been building up her career ever since. She is incredibly professional. When the moment came she was absolutely ready for it," he says.
Today Shakira, one of nine children of a Lebanese businessman who moved to Colombia, is worth about $38 million, making her the world's fourth highest grossing female singer, says Forbes magazine, after Madonna, Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion. She is also the biggest-selling Spanish singer of all time, feted by politicians and fans alike and one who enjoys a unique popularity among children, particularly young girls in her native continent.
But her success was anything but overnight. Following the evening in the restaurant her career struggled to get off the ground.
She was turned down for the choir at her convent school by nuns who feared her precocious vibrato made her sound "like a goat", though it seems they encouraged her love of belly dancing, deeming it cultural rather than profane.
After having successfully ambushed a record company executive in the lobby of a motel on Barranquilla she signed a three-album deal. But the first two albums bombed.
By 15 she had left school and was living in Bogota, appearing in downmarket soap operas. She found herself at the centre of attention for hardly the best of artistic reasons, topping a magazine poll for possessing the finest bottom on television.
The breakthrough came with her third album, Pies Descalzos (Bare Feet), which sold four million albums across Latin America. But at that time no one singing in Spanish could lay claim to universal stardom, not least because the holy grail of the United States marketplace simply refused to yield to singers offering a non-English vocal.
The answer was to record an album in English and Spanish - Servicio De Lavanderia, or Laundry Service. Critics claimed and continue to suggest that her work in English, learnt, it is said, from rhyming dictionaries and the poetry of Leonard Cohen, still appears brittle and weak alongside that of her native tongue.
But this did not prevent her signing with the impresario Freddy DeMann, who helped launch the careers of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Alanis Morissette. The dual-language, follow-up albums, Oral Fixation Volumes 1 and 2 (Fijacion Oral), which she promoted with a vast world tour, earned her a clutch of Grammys and MTV Awards.
Despite having quit her native Colombia for the more genteel comforts of Miami's Key Biscayne, in the heartland of her American fan base, she remains a hero in her homeland.
"Colombians are tremendously nationalistic and look up to any of their national figures if they are successful. Of course some people may disapprove of her but the vast majority are 100 per cent behind her," said Stanton.
One rather unexpected admirer is Colombia's foremost literary talent, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Nobel laureate was deeply enamoured with the young singer and was in no doubt she was a gift to mankind.
"With the face of a perfect young girl, and her deceptive frailty, she always had the absolute certainty she would be a public personality of world renown. She did not know in what art or in what manner, but she did not have a shadow of doubt, as if she were condemned to a prophecy," the writer said in one lavish profile.
National solidarity brought the two together again last year when Shakira was personally asked by Marquez to compose music for the film adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera. She was invited to appear in it but turned down the role after finding out that it involved nudity.
Her music, however, has been welcomed for incorporating wider aspects of Colombia's cultural heritage, notably referencing the instruments of the country's indigenous populations.
Shakira has also drawn praise for helping dispel the country's violent image.
"When people write about Colombia there is a knee-jerk reaction to talk about drugs and violence," says Stanton. "But Bogota is transforming and is now a relatively peaceful city and the economy is improving. There is a lot of violence that goes on but it is mainly between those who are involved in illegal things."
It is a state of affairs that has not inspired any great wave of musical protest. "Some artists are tackling political themes but the music is generally about having a good time, though sometimes they play with lyrics that have more than one meaning," Stanton adds.
But the singer is no stranger to the Latin American political process in all its volatility. Though she was romantically linked with the Irish actor Colin Farrell, her regular squeeze since 2000 has been Antonio de la Rua, the son of the former Argentinian President Fernando de la Rua.
De la Rua snr was forced from office by huge demonstrations at the height of the country's financial crisis in 2001, when rioters called on his famous prospective daughter-in-law to help pay off the national debt.
The former President was accused last year by a federal judge of failing to prevent the killing of five protesters during the riots, raising the prospect of a highly embarrassing trial which could coincide with the widely anticipated wedding of his son and the star.
But the incident seems to have done little to tarnish the Shakira brand.
Her own charity, the Pies Descalzos Foundation, has been raising money for Colombia's poorest children since 1997, and she has performed in London for the Prince's Trust, at the Paris leg of the Live 8 concert and in Germany for last year's Live Earth environmental extravaganza.
And as a Unicef goodwill ambassador she has visited Bangladesh and El Salvador to campaign for children hit by a recent cyclone and whose lives are blighted by violence.
POP STARS AND POLITICS
Bob Geldof
Force behind Live 8, before that Live Aid, and earlier still Band Aid. Upset Canadians when he told their Prime Minister Paul Martin not to bother showing up at a G8 meeting unless he was prepared to increase foreign aid: "Since when do statesmen bow down to rock stars?", asked Connie Woodcock of the Toronto Sun.
Bono
The U2 singer once claimed: "I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have no voice at all ... They haven't asked me to represent them. It's cheeky but I hope they're glad I do."
Bruce Springsteen
Endorsed Barack Obama last week. Undertook a Vote for Change tour in 2004 in a national campaign to oust George W. Bush. Mr Bush prevailed.
- INDEPENDENT
