Shakira was sick of being a celebrity. Colombia's sensationally successful singer-songwriter had just come off her "Oral Fixation" tour earlier this year, taking her to 140 cities on five continents to perform for 2.5 million fans. But even stardom can be a drag.
So she put away her revealing sequined gowns and hip-hugging pants, donned jeans and sneakers, tucked her famous shock of dyed hair under a cap and went undercover as a summer student at UCLA. She enrolled in a history of Western civilization course under her middle and last names, Isabel Mebarak, telling clueless classmates she was just visiting from Colombia.
"Oh, it was such a respite for me," Shakira recalls. "I felt that need to put a brake on everything, to escape from the celebrity life and reclaim a normal life for a while. It was very healthy for me."
Her decompression from rock star to common coed was not just therapeutic, it coincided with the creative retreat she required to compose new songs for the film "Love in the Time of Cholera," which opened Friday. This is the first time she has written music for a movie, a challenge she assumed in honor of her compatriot, mentor and "dear friend," Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel laureate whose novel of love and irrational devotion is the basis for the movie.
The work marks a radical departure for Shakira, from flashy, electrified pop/rock to gentle, acoustic, Latin American folk styles. The songs -- a bolero and a traditional Andean tune -- are almost period pieces, tailored to the film's genteel setting in Cartagena circa 1900.
Shakira is arguably the most successful bicultural star Latin America has produced, and she's always been adept at straddling both English- and Spanish-speaking worlds with her seductive pop fusion that draws also on her Middle Eastern heritage. But these songs required her to tap into deep cultural roots, to reconnect with the music she was raised on in Barranquilla, music that still makes her cry and that instantly touches her soul, like a memory.
"It was refreshing, because it allowed me to leave the pop universe for a moment and not think about the Top 10 on the radio, and not think about . . . ." She pauses. "And simply not think. To just let the sensibility flow from those stories, let those Garcia Marquez metaphors connect with the deepest part of me, and allow the music to be born form all of that."
