Believe it or not the number one type of music in St. Lucia is not reggae, calypso, soca, R & B or even hip hop, its Country and Western. And not the new stuff, it’s the music of your parents and grandparents, the slower the better. St. Lucian’s have had a serious love affair with Country and Western since the 50’s when American GI’s stationed on the two military bases in St. Lucia exposed the island to recorded music.

In the 50’s and 60’s St. Lucia’s airwaves were flooded with Country music from the Southern US states. In the 70’s it became even more popular when St. Lucian’s began traveling to Florida to cut sugar cane and returned to tell everyone about the music they heard. It is only this era, between the 1950’s and the 1970’s, which gained popularity and have remained immensely popular to this day.

The music is heard everywhere on the island, in rum shops, on buses, in people’s homes, and on the streets. Every day it can be heard on the radio and some weekends a Country and Western dance is even aired live. These dances usually last long into the night and the patrons are happy to wait until 6am for a bus home.

St. Lucian’s know next to nothing about more recent artists like Garth Brooks, Shania Twain or Clint Black. Here, it is Jim Reeves, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Charley Pride, Buck Owens, Hank Williams, and Merle Haggard amongst others who are revered. Jim Reeves has been dead for over 40 years but buses are still named after his songs.

Moe Baldy once had a concert here and when the audience demanded he sing one of his classic songs he had to tell them he forgot the lyrics long ago; but the audience was not to be deterred and quickly wrote out all the lyrics and as someone held them up for Moe to read he sang the song.

Choiseul is fondly referred to locally as the “Country and Western capital of the world”, no matter what Nashville has to say about it. Here, like no other place, can you find a Country and Western dance any given weekend and be guaranteed a good time. Just make sure you like to dance and maybe sing a little karaoke. At these dances men adopt the most predatory tactics becoming either sharks or peacocks.

The sharks move from one end of the dance hall to the other assessing which of the ladies are alone and might want to dance. A few ladies will even parade the dance floor hoping to fall prey to one of the marauding sharks! The peacocks strut their stuff with an imaginary partner hoping to entice one of the ladies to come out and join them.

Choiseulian’s love to sing and dance and Country music just feels right to them. The music tells a story dealing with the dilemmas of life with a complexity not found in any other music. The St. Lucian quadrille and traditional folk music is very similar to Country and Western and as it declined, Country filled the gap.

The African storytelling and song traditions that run deep within St. Lucian’s are also found in this genre of music. Anyone who thinks Country music is just for American Rednecks needs only come to one dance in Choiseul to see the heart and soul of Country music is truly in Choiseul.

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