La India Canela
Dominican Republic musician
"La India Canela" is an accordionist and musician from the Dominican Republic. She plays music from the merengue típico tradition. Born Lidia Maria Hernandez Lopez, she was born in El Limon, Villa González, in the Santiago Province. She is the first professional musician in her family, though her father and brother played recreationally. Both terms in her stage name refer to her skin color: India is the preferred term for mulatto in the Dominican Republic and canela carries the additional connotation of sweetness and spiciness.
Recognizing her talent, her father took her to stay with Miro Francisco, a famous saxophonist who also played accordion. One day, Juan de Dios, Fefita la Grande's saxophonists decided to bring her to Santiago and make a musical group. In Santiago, La India learned from Siano Arias, Rafaelito Polanco, Lupe Valerio, and Rafaelito Román, and went on to record several albums and win two Casandra Awards. In 2008, she recorded an album "Merengue Típico from the Dominican Republic" on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered. She has begun to tour in the U.S. including Washington DC and New York City.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “La India Canela” as dominican Republic musician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as dominican Republic musician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2022. The linked authority identifier is Q6463176. VIAF identifies the subject as 34266818. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “La India Canela”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow La India Canela primary sources, La India Canela archive and India research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “La India Canela” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.