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Madonna

Madonna Ciccone Ritchie, (born Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone on August 16, 1958 in Bay City, Michigan) is a famous United States pop singer, pop icon, composer, dancer, actress, producer, author and fashion icon.

Madonna is widely regarded as the Queen of Pop music. According to Guinness Book of World Records she is the "Most Successful Female Solo Artist" in the World. Her popularity and importance to pop culture is on the same level as acts such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Just as with those artists, Madonna's influence can be seen in countless performers today.

As of December 2005, Madonna had 12 multi-platinum albums certified by the RIAA (US), which, in all, had certified her for shipments of 64 million units in USA. In a 2005 statement, her record label, Warner Bros., said she had sold more than 200 million albums.

Madonna currently resides in Wiltshire, England with her husband, film director Guy Ritchie, her daughter, Lourdes Maria Leon (born. October 14, 1996) and their son, Rocco John Ritchie (born. August 11, 2000).

Biography

Madonna was born to an Italian-American Chrysler engineer, Silvio "Tony" P. Ciccone, and Madonna Louise Fortin (from a French Canadian family in Bay City, Michigan) and identifies herself as an Italian American. She was raised in a Catholic family of twelve children in the Detroit suburbs of Pontiac and Rochester Hills.

Her mother died at the age of thirty, of breast cancer, on December 1, 1963, when Madonna was only five. The singer has frequently discussed the enormous impact her mother's death had on her life and career. Following his wife's death, Silvio brought in a housekeeper, Joan Gustafson. He later married her and had two children.

Silvio required all of his children to take music lessons. After a few months of piano lessons, Madonna convinced her father to allow her to take ballet classes instead, and she proved to be a gifted dancer.

Madonna attended Rochester Adams High School, where she was a straight-A student and excelled at sports. She was a member of the cheerleading squad, honing her dance skill. After graduating from high school in 1976, Madonna received a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan. At the encouragement of her ballet teacher, Christopher Flynn, Madonna left college at the end of her second year and moved to New York City to pursue a dance career. She studied with modern dance legend Martha Graham, as well as a Graham disciple, Pearl Lang. Madonna later performed with several modern dance companies, including Alvin Ailey and the Walter Nicks dancers.

After performing as a dancer for French disco star Patrick Hernandez on his 1979 world tour, Madonna abandoned her fledgeling dance career to pursue music. She formed several bands, including "Breakfast Club" and "Emmy". She also wrote a number of songs that brought her local fame in New York dance clubs, particularly Danceteria. It was in the band Emmy that Madonna found herself at the legendary underground NYC club called Max's Kansas City, where she saw and adopted the sexual stance of Andy Warhol's superstar Cherry Vanilla, who served as a blueprint role model for Madonna's 80s antics.

Personal life

Though Madonna Ciccone is half French Canadian, more often the influence of her Italian American heritage has been reflected in her work. Perhaps this is because Madonna's French Canadian mother died when Madonna was five and Madonna was subsequently raised by her Italian American father. (It has been claimed that Madonna shares a common French Canadian ancestor with Celine Dion.) References to Madonna's Italian heritage have often been found in her work. In the video for "Truth or Dare", Madonna describes herself as "Italian American". She says, "I'm an Italian American and proud of it." In her 2005 documentary I'm Going To Tell You a Secret, Madonna jokingly states that she has "big Italian thighs". In the video for Papa Don't Preach she wears a shirt that says, "Italians Do It Better". Madonna has described her birth name -- Madonna Ciccone -- as being "very Italian". The video for her second concert tour, the "Who's That Girl?" tour, was filmed mainly in Turin, Italy; the video is titled "Ciao Italia: Madonna Live from Italy". The video to her first #1 song, Like a Virgin, featured Madonna performing in Venice, Italy.

Fellow Italian American pop singer Gwen Stefani has been quoted as saying that she and Madonna share a common relative. Stefani has claimed that her great aunt married a man from Detroit, Michigan (the area of Michigan that Madonna is from) with the last name "Ciccone."

Involvement with Kabbalah Centre

Since the late 1990s, Madonna has become a devotee of the Kabbalah Centre and a disciple of its controversial head Rabbi Philip Berg and his wife Karen. Madonna and husband Guy Ritchie attend Kabbalah classes and have been reported to have adopted a number of aspects of the movement and associated with Judaism. The media has reported that Madonna has taken-on the Biblical name of Esther, has donated millions of dollars to the Kabbalah Centre in London, New York and Los Angeles, no longer performs on Friday nights because it's the time when the Jewish Sabbath begins, wears a red string, has visited Israel with members of the Kabbalah Centre to celebrate some of the Jewish holidays, studies personally with her own private-tutor rabbi Eitan Yardeni whose wife Sarah Yardeni runs Madonna's favorite charitable project, "Spirituality for Kids", a subsidiary of the Kabbalah Centre. Madonna reportedly donated 21 million dollars towards a new Kabbalah school for children.

Recently references to Kabbalah Centre beliefs and principles have appeared in her music, including the track "Nobody Knows Me" from American Life (I sleep much better at night / I feel closer to the Light / Now I'm gonna try / To Improve my life). Controversy again surrounded her well before the release of her most recent album Confessions on a Dance Floor when many Israeli rabbis condemned Madonna and the forthcoming song "Isaac" (tenth on its track listing) for they believed the song to be a tribute to Rabbi Isaac Luria, also known as Yitzhak Luria (1534-1572), one of the greatest Kabbalists of all time, claiming that Jewish law forbids using a holy rabbi's name for profit (whether Jewish law actually forbids this, or the rabbis were simply uncomfortable with Madonna's song, is disputed). In interviews, Madonna had called this song: "The Binding of Isaac" and rumors spread that it was based on the major episode in the life of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac. Despite continued accusations that the song is about Isaac Luria, Madonna has repeatedly denied such accusations, claiming she could not think of a title for the song and, thereforere, named it after Yitzhak (Isaac) Sinwani. In the song, Madonna sings with Sinwani, an Israeli singer, who is chanting a Yemenite Jewish song. Said Madonna: "The album isn't even out, so how could Jewish scholars in Israel know what my song is about? I don't know enough about Isaac Luria to write a song, though I've learned a bit in my studies."

Madonna has openly defended her Kabbalah studies by stating, for example:

I wouldn't say studying Kabbalah for eight years goes under the category or falls under the category of being a fad or a trend. Now there might be people who are interested in it because they think it's trendy, but I can assure you that studying Kabbalah is actually a very challenging thing to do. It requires a lot of work, a lot of reading, a lot of time, a lot of commitment and a lot of discipline.

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