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Calypso Mama, real name Maureen Verlene Duvalier, (14 May 1926 - 19 December 2014) [1] was a legendary Bahamian blues/calypso artist. [2]
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Calypso Mama, real name Maureen Verlene Duvalier, (14 May 1926 - 19 December 2014) [1] was a legendary Bahamian blues/calypso artist. [2]
Calypso Mama was born to Bahamian parents. Her grandfather on her father's side is from Haiti and is related to former dictator, François Duvalier. [3]
François Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc, was a Haitian politician of French Martiniquan descent who served as the President of Haiti from 1957 until his death. He was elected president in the 1957 general election on a populist and black nationalist platform. After thwarting a military coup d'état in 1958, his regime rapidly became more autocratic and despotic. An undercover government death squad, the Tonton Macoute, indiscriminately killed Duvalier's opponents; the Tonton Macoute was thought to be so pervasive that Haitians became highly fearful of expressing any form of dissent, even in private. Duvalier further sought to solidify his rule by incorporating elements of Haitian mythology into a personality cult.
Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed "Baby Doc", was a Haitian politician who was the President of Haiti from 1971 until he was overthrown by a popular uprising in February 1986. He succeeded his father François "Papa Doc" Duvalier as the ruler of Haiti after his death in 1971. After assuming power, he introduced cosmetic changes to his father's regime and delegated much authority to his advisors. Thousands of Haitians were killed or tortured, and hundreds of thousands fled the country during his presidency. He maintained a notoriously lavish lifestyle while poverty among his people remained the most widespread of any country in the Western Hemisphere.
The music of the Bahamas is associated primarily with Junkanoo, a celebration which occurs on Boxing Day and again on New Year's Day. Parades and other celebrations mark the ceremony. Groups like The Baha Men, Ronnie Butler and Kirkland Bodie have gained massive popularity in Japan, the United States and other places. Other popular Bahamian artists include Stileet and Stevie S.
The music of Turks and Caicos Islands is best known for its ripsaw music. It is accompanied by an array of instruments, including maracas, triangles, box guitar, conga drums, goat and cowskin drums, accordion, concertina and, most prominently and uniquely, the carpenter saw.
Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. As of the fall of 2023, she will be the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro or Black West Indian or Afro or Black Antillean. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.
Simone Duvalier, also known as Mama Doc, was the wife of Haitian leader François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and the First Lady of Haiti.
Bahamian culture is a hybrid of African, European, and other cultures.
Macfarlane Gregory Anthony Mackey, known professionally as Tony McKay and Exuma, was a Bahamian musician, artist, playwright, and author best known for his music that blends folk, carnival, junkanoo, calypso, reggae, and African music stylings.
Edouard Duval-Carrié is a Haitian-born American contemporary painter and sculptor based in Miami, Florida.
Goombay is a form of Bahamian music and a drum used to create it. The drum is a membranophone made with goat skin and played with the hands. The term Goombay has also symbolized an event in the Bahamas, for a summer festival with short parades known as ‘Junkanoo’.
Michèle Bennett is the former First Lady of Haiti and the ex‑wife of former President of Haiti, Jean‑Claude Duvalier. They fled to France together when he resigned in 1986; they divorced in 1990.
Raymond Alcide Joseph is a Haitian diplomat, journalist, political activist and author. He was the Haitian ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2010, and he resigned to be considered for candidacy in the 2010 Haitian presidential election. He is founder of the largest Haitian newspaper Haïti Observateur, based out of Brooklyn, New York, that circulates not only for the Haitian diaspora but in Haiti as well. He infamously ran an informant operation of sources surrounding, in, and out of the presidential palace in Haiti during the Duvalier authoritarian years, that leaked information for him to report, all while avoiding an attempt on his life.
A constitutional referendum was held in Haiti on 14 June 1964 alongside general elections. The new constitution made President François "Papa Doc" Duvalier president for life, with absolute power and the right to name his successor. It also changed the country's flag from blue and red to black and red, with the black symbolising the country's ties to Africa.
André Toussaint was a Haitian singer and guitarist who emigrated to Nassau, Bahamas in 1953 and performed there until his death in 1981. He sang and recorded in several languages and in a variety of styles, most notably calypso.
Island Women is a 1958 American drama film directed by William Berke and written by Andrew Alexander and Philip Yordan. The film stars Marie Windsor, Vince Edwards, Marilee Earle, Leslie Scott and Irene Williams. The film was released in May 1958 by United Artists.
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