Tracking transnational Shakira on her way to conquer the world

The Colombian singer and composer Shakira, has become a transnational musical product. Her presence on the world stage is by now a commodity that screams the ideology of a unified globe. In the latest version of the FIFA’s World Cup (2010) she was the main musical number for the inaugural concert because her proposed song was chosen as the event’s anthem. Controversy for her use of a song from Cameroon that was popular in Colombia in the 1980s was diffused on time by good political moves. With this latest song and video, Shakira again represents her “blackness”, her “Caribbeaness”, pointing strongly to a performative activity that has been having effect since she crossed the Colombian and Latin American borders in order to start recording under Miami’s pop star producing machine. I trace in this paper, through a few of her music videos, what she has chosen or asked or coached to represent, as she performs her way to global stardom: tamed otherness. An ethics of aesthetics of popular culture is what is asked though this reflection, especially since Shakira is a professed humanitarian who has created the Barefoot Foundation in order to educate marginalized Colombian children