Sunshine, sea and all that jazz
Saint Lucia’s music festival in May is when the island dances to an irresistible beat
WE ALL know music is vital to Caribbean life — and two rhythms rule. There’s reggae from Jamaica in the west and calypso from Trinidad in the south-east. But jazz? Well, the Saint lucia Jazz & arts Festival is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary and I’d do anything to be there if last year’s is anything to go by.
It adopts an unashamedly broad reach, to attract as wide a range of visitors as possible. Previous line-ups have include Santana, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Rihanna.
The festival takes place between april 30 and May 12, which is after the winter season but before the Caribbean becomes stiflingly hot. So there will be music, fashion, arts — and sunshine — around the island.
This year, the build-up will see a night of gospel singing and two nights billed as Pure Jazz (including some steel-band jazz, american bassist John Patitucci and double Grammy-winning vocalist Samara Joy).
The event culminates in three nights in the main venue at Pigeon Point in the far north — first with Caribbean Fusion, featuring bands and rhythms from the region; then World Beats, which flies in artists from elsewhere (this year adding latin singer Jon Secada to the popular afro-Beat line-up).
Finally to the headline act, which in 2023 saw Sting and Shaggy renew their 2018 collaboration. This year it will be all out of love rock duo air Supply.
a good place to stay is Windjammer landing, from where we were ferried to Pigeon Point on a ten-minute boat ride. If the historic point, an islet linked to the mainland via a man-made causeway, was once a fortress, now it feels decidedly un-martial. Saint lucians of all ages and visitors all mingle there. and it gets unashamedly lively.
You visit lucia for other reasons, of course. There’s its burgeoning chocolatemaking industry, for example, and in the capital, Castries, we were guided through a ‘bean to bar’ chocolate experience on the veranda of Victorian Howelton House, at the centre of a lush, tropical eightacre estate. Pestling cocoa beans in a heated mortar, we stirred in sugar and cocoa butter and poured the fragrant mix into a mould. While it chilled we drank fresh soursop juice and enjoyed superb views over the charming town.
at just 14 miles across and exceptionally mountainous, it’s hard to imagine that Saint lucia has a slow-flowing river, but we were punted for two miles on bamboo rafts between the forested banks of the meandering Roseau.
at the coast, the mounded sand of Roseau Beach diverts the stream into a mangrove forest. We entered an atmospheric cavern of trees like a green cathedral. lunch was served on the beach under an awning, between dips in the sparklingly sea.
Saint lucia’s terrain makes driving from one end of the island to the other slow
and laborious, so the best way to visit its iconic twin peaks, the
Pitons, in the south, is on a day’s boat trip. We joined KnottyGirl Speed Boat
Tours, which stops along the way.
at anse Chastanet, we dived in to snorkel around the reef and I found myself swimming among thousands upon thousands of fish, each an inch long and shimmering around me like smoke. They darted chaotically as I moved, then instantaneously realigned in their schools.
around the headland, the Pitons soared from the coast like vast incisors. They are one of the Caribbean’s most impressive sights and best seen from the sea. once, they were the walls of a volcano. Now the nearly dormant underworld oozes out in sulphurous hot springs.
We bathed in grey volcanic mud (good for the skin apparently), before rinsing and cooling off in the Toraille waterfall, a 60ft ice-bucket challenge.
There’s been talk about how AI will manage to create music, particularly jazz. But as I left the island with the sound of Sting’s Roxanne and Boombastic from a gravelly-voiced Shaggy ringing in my ears, I decided that we’re safe... for a while, at least.