Lourdes Pérez (born Bernardita de Lourdes Pérez Cruz on February 12, 1961) is a prolific Puerto Rican contemporary recording artist, songwriter, composer, arranger, poet, contralto vocalist and guitarist. She is also one of few female décimistas (writer of décima, a specialized form of Spanish poetry). Pérez's music — often conjuring comparisons to the soulful world music genres of cante jonde, morna and fado — draws from her jíbara (Puerto Rican mountain) roots and a socially conscious genre of Spanish/pan-Latin American music called nueva trova or nueva cancion.
Pérez was born in Hato Arriba, San Sebastián, Puerto Rico. Considered by many to be "among the great Latin American female vocalists" and songwriters, Lourdes Pérez has performed duets with numerous legendary and diverse artists, from Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa and Mexican master decimista Guillermo Velázquez to Canadian pop artist Jane Siberry. Acclaimed for her "ability to transcend language...with her achingly beautiful contralto voice," she has devoted her work to promoting human rights around the globe. Lourdes is one of 1000 performers in the world profiled in the MusicHound World: The Essential Album Guide (2000) and she is featured in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Lourdes (pronunciation: [luʀd]; Lorda in Occitan, pron. ['lurðɔ]) is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It is part of the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France. Prior to the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1858, the most prominent feature of the town was the fortified castle that rises up from a rocky escarpment at its centre.
In 1858 Lourdes rose to prominence in France and abroad due to the Marian apparitions seen by the peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous, who was later canonized. Shortly thereafter the city became one of the world's most important sites of pilgrimage and religious tourism. Today Lourdes hosts around six million visitors every year from all corners of the world. This constant stream of pilgrims and tourists transformed quiet Lourdes into the second most important center of tourism in France, second only to Paris, and the third most important site of international Catholic pilgrimage after Rome and the Holy Land. As of 2011, of French cities only Paris had more hotel capacity.
Lourdes and María de Lourdes are given names.
Notable people bearing these names include:
Lourdes Cecilia Fernández (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlourðes seˈsilja ferˈnandes]; born 2 April 1981) is an Argentine singer-songwriter, composer and actress. She is the best known as a member of Argentine girl group Bandana and as a frontman of Lourdes, a band that carries her name.
As a student, Fernández was a member of two bands, Terikitungo and Seres Humanos. She was a student of Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. As a player of piano and electronic keyboards, Fernández became composing music on a computer program, which helped her to create more modern sound. In 2001, she went on an audition for talents show Popstars, which selected five girls for a girl group — Ivonne Guzmán, Valeria Gastaldi, Virginia Da Cunha, Lissa Vera and Fernández. As their emergence coincided with a period of nationwide economic depression, one of the series judges commented "this was an opportunity to shine at a very downbeat moment for Argentina". During the Popstars, Fernández was known as "la peti" ("shorty"), which was commented by judge Afo Verde that "appearance didn't matter to us, what each girl conveyed was most important". The band was named Bandana.