Michel Martelly construction and briefly attended a community college in Miami. In 1986, after one semester, he returned to Haiti just as Jean-Claude Duvalier, then president-for-life, was heading into exile. In 1987, Martelly returned to Miami with his then-girlfriend, Sophia Saint-Rémy, whom he later married in a small ceremony in Miami, Florida. They returned to Haiti in 1988. Upon his return to Haiti, Martelly had his first breakthrough in the music industry when he began playing keyboard as a fill-in musician in local venues in Pétion-Ville and Kenscoff, upscale suburbs of Port-au-Prince. Martelly "sang playful, romantic numbers over a slow méringue beat
Mario Michel Mario Michel Mario F. Michel (born 1960) is a Saint Lucian lawyer and politician and since 2009 has been a judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. Michel studied Economics and History at the University of the West Indies in Cave Hill, Barbados. He then went on to study at the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago from 1988 to 1990. In 1990 he started his own legal practice, " Michel & Company ", which he pursued until being elected to Parliament in 1997, representing the district of Gros Islet. Michel is a former President of the National