Gordon Henderson

Who is Gordon Henderson?

Gordon Henderson was born in 1949 in Roseau, Dominica, and grew up in Portsmouth before attending St Mary's Academy in Roseau, where he first performed in school talent shows. In the late 1960s he formed the quartet Voltage Four, touring Martinique and Guadeloupe, and in 1970 he moved to Guadeloupe to front the band Les Vikings, co-writing the regional hit "Love." He went on to found Exile One, a Guadeloupe-based band built around Dominican musicians, which fused Haitian cadence rhythms with Anglophone calypso and Creole lyrics to create the genre known as cadence-lypso. In 1975 Exile One became the first Creole act to sign with the major French label Barclay, and the group's recordings sold widely across the French and English Caribbean, opening the commercial path that later led to the emergence of zouk music in the French Antilles. Henderson also produced fellow Dominican artist Ophelia Marie, helping establish her as one of the island's leading vocalists. Widely credited as the "Godfather of Cadence-lypso" and the "Creole father of soul," Henderson remains one of the most influential figures in the modern popular music of the French and English-speaking Eastern Caribbean.

Sources: Dominica Festivals, "Gordon Henderson" profile · Division of Culture (Government of Dominica), Gordon Henderson artist profile · Dominica News Online, "Gordon Henderson - Le pere de la Cadence-Lypso"