María Dolores Pradera (born 29 August 1924 in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

) is a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 melodic singer and actress, and one of the most prestigious voices in Spain and Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

. She is also known as María Dolores or La Pradera. She started her career as an actress, working in the theatre and in some of the most famous Spanish movies from the 1940s: “¡A mí la legión!” (1942), “La Lola se va a los puertos” (1947), or “Agustina de Aragón

Agustina de Aragón

Agustina Raimunda María Saragossa Doménech, or Agustina de Aragón was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army...

” (1950).

During the 1950s, she started singing professionally, eventually abandoning her career as an actress in the 1960s. Since then, she has recorded more than 35 discs.

As a singer, she has specialized in traditional Spanish and Latin American music: bolero

Bolero

Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...

, copla (music)

Copla (music)

The copla or copla andaluza is a form of Spanish popular song, deriving from the poetic form of the same name. The genre arose in the 1940s, and is epitomized by songwriters Antonio Quintero, Rafael de León and Manuel Quiroga.One of the first singers of coplas was Raquel Meller...

, ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

, ronda

Ronda

Ronda is a city in Spanish province of Málaga. It is located about West from the city of Málaga, within the autonomous community of Andalusia. Its population is approximately 35,000 inhabitants.-History:...

, vals

Vals (dance)

Vals is an Argentine tango style, the tango version of waltz. Unlike Argentine Tango and Milonga, there are no stopping figures. The vals is danced in a continuous movement. Not to be confused with the Peruvian Waltz, most widely known as Vals criollo....

, and folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 (Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

vian, Argentinian

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, Mexican

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, and Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

n). Her voice tone is clear and slightly low, and she has an extremely proper Spanish pronunciation. She typically sings accompanied by guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

s, requinto

Requinto

The term requinto is used in both Spanish and Portuguese to mean a smaller, higher-pitched version of another instrument. Thus, there are requinto guitars, drums, and several wind instruments.-Wind instruments:...

s, and drums. She sang for close to 30 years with the same group, Los Gemelos, formed by twin brothers, Santiago López Hernández and Julián López Hernández, until the death of Santiago in the early 1990s.

External links