National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

Broadcaster, comidian and folkorist Louise Bennett Coverley, known to generations of Jamaicans simply as "Miss Lou," died yesterday in a Toronto hospital. According to a report in Jamaica's Daily Gleaner newspaper today, Bennett Coverley collapsed at her home early yesterday and was taken to the Scarborough Grace Hospital in Toronto, Canada, where she died. She was 86.

Famous for her radio shows, including "Laugh with Louise," "Miss Lou's Views" and "The Lou and Ranny Show" with Ranny Williams, as well as her 1970's children's television show "Ring Ding," Bennett Coverly was a leading advocate of patwa, as the Jamaican patois is known on the island. Her broadcasts drew on her deep knowledge of Jamaican folk tales, proverbs, jokes and local history, and helped legitimize patwa as a living language.

For this work she received numerous awards, both in Jamaica and abroad. According to the Gleaner report, in 2001 she received the Order of Merit; the Order of Jamaica in 1974, the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in the field of Arts, the Institute of Jamaica's Musgrave silver and gold medals for distinguished eminence in the field of arts and culture. In 1960 she was made a member of the British Empire (MBE) for work in Jamaican literature and theatre.