Ophelia Marie

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Ophelia Marie was a popular singer of cadence-lypso from Dominica in the 1980s. She is sometimes referred to as Dominica's Lady of Song, and the First Lady of Creole. She has toured widely in France and had concerts broadcast over much of the Francophone world.

She was the first non-French winner of the Maracas d’Or Award from Société Pernod, and has been awarded International Woman's Year in 1985, the Sisserou Award of Honour (the second highest award in Dominica), a Lifetime Award in 2005 and a Golden Drum Award in 1984. In 2005, Ophelia hosted the fifth Dynamith d'Or Caribbean Music Awards.[The Dominican]

Her signature tune is "Ay Dominique", which was also her first recording, and became an iconic anthem for Dominicans. Ophelia's musical idol is the South African singer Miriam Makeba[Soca News]

Biography

Ophelia performed as a young girl in a group called the Five O's, which performed at church functions. Her husband and manager, McCarthy Marie, encouraged her to start her solo career. Her first recording was "Ay Dominique", a "lament for Dominica as the country underwent political problems in the 1970s"[Soca News]. The song became a popular anthem among Dominicans, and she began recording with Gordon Henderson, placing herself at the forefront of cadence-lypso. She often sung about women's issues, a rarity at the time, and was among the first women to sing at the Théâtre Noir, Cirque d’Hiver and the Théâtre de la Renaissance.[Soca News]

See also: Music of Dominica

References

Notes

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