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**Balla** · August 9, 2006, 11:26 AM

RE: may the good duppy follow Miss Lou

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=465 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=465 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=465 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left><SPAN class=date>The Times</SPAN></TD><TD vAlign=top align=right><SPAN class=date>August 02, 2006</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<H1>Louise Bennett-Coverley</H1><SPAN class=byline>September 7, 1919 - July 26, 2006</SPAN>
<H3>Poet and broadcaster whose courageous use of patois inspired Jamaicans to take a pride in their language</H3></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD height=5></TD></TR><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=465 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=150 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD></TD><TD bgColor=#ffffff></TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=bottom align=middle><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=bottom><SPAN class=caption>"Miss Lou's" style and patois have influenced modern rappers and DJs around the world (Esther Anderson/Corbis)</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD><TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><DIV class=textcopy>KNOWN fondly on her Caribbean island and throughout the Jamaican diaspora as “Miss Lou”, Louise Bennett-Coverley was a cultural icon on a par, among her own people, with Bob Marley, one of many artists she influenced through her poetry in the island’s patois.

Marley, who initially dreamt of being a soul singer after the style of the American Sam Cooke, credited her with giving him the pride and conviction to include in his songs words in his own dialect — which until then had been considered a marketing liability.

Although she lived in Canada for almost the last two decades of her 86 years, for reasons involving her husband’s health, Bennett-Coverley was considered the mother of Jamaican culture and was granted the Order of Jamaica by the Government in 1974, giving her the official title “the Honourable”. Her return visits in recent years were treated like state occasions.

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0 VALIGN="TOP"><TBODY><TR><TD id=mpuHeader name="mpuHeader"></TD></TR><TR align=right><TD align=right><SCRIPT type=text/javascript>NI_MPU('middle');</SCRIPT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Bennett-Coverley studied at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Art in London after the war and was one of the first Jamaicans to sing and read poetry on what was then called the BBC’s West Indian Service, now the Caribbean Service.

Perhaps her greatest legacy was turning her island’s creole — a mixture mainly of English and West African tongues brought by slaves — from a thing to be ashamed of in class-conscious and racist colonial Jamaica into a proud vehicle for poetry, song, dance and drama, a new cultural phenomenon in its own right.

Recording some traditional patois songs he had first heard on her 1954 album Jamaican Folk Songs, including Banana Boat Song (“Day-o, Day-o, Daylight come and me want go home”) was what launched the career of Harry Belafonte.

Louise Bennett was born in the island’s capital, Kingston, in 1919, and was brought up by her dressmaker mother. It was not just from her story-telling mother and grandmother, but also from customers from all walks of life, rich and poor, that she picked up the tales she would soon turn into folk songs, poems or often pantomime in the patois.

“Everything that’s important comes from folklore,” she said.

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