The St. Lucian’s of today have evolved over a period of 500 years into a harmonious intertwining of social and cultural mixes derived from their African, European, Indians and Amerindian descendants.
St. Lucians are an independent people and are famous for their natural courtesy, generosity and positive outlook on life. Their philosophy is deeply rooted from their Christian heritage.
The Roman Catholic Church, which was brought to the island with the French settlers, was incorporated into the life of the African-descent islanders until it became part of their culture.
In 1846 it is recorded that a visiting catholic bishop to St. Lucia are marked, “Nowhere in the world is there a Catholic population more pious, not even in Ireland.”
Even before most of the population had become literate, St. Lucians were celebrating their masses in French, Latin and English, and with the new self-confidence arising from their independence in 1979, their native dialect has been included in the liturgy.
The centuries of broad fusion of races and cultures in St. Lucia has created a people with a universal perspective that exemplifies the equality of people.
This spirit of freedom has spared St. Lucians the sense of inferiority that has commonly accompanied the history of slavery.
The native language of the Saint Lucian people, Patios, is an African-French dialect similar to French Creole. It is rich with expressions more reminiscent of Africa than France and clearly reflects the thinking of the slaves in their struggle to survive in the unequal world in which they lived.
And not surprising, modern-day St. Lucians, much like their ancestors, turn to music and dance as a means of solace, entertainment and enjoyment.
St. Lucian music seems to have been adopted from the French planters, evidenced by names such as Begin, Polka, and Codrille.
St. Lucia’s national musical instruments are the drum, the quarto, the chac chac, and the baha. The lead instrument has always been the violin, which, up until recently, was made of wild breadfruit wood.
At Christmas, the traditional midnight mass becomes a great opera, in which the whole congregation joins in a chorus of some of the finest European and St. Lucian music.
St. Lucians are famous for their many annual festivals throughout the year that are celebrations of special occasions, patron saints’ birthdays or national holidays.
The most enduring of these festivals, which is an illustration of local culture, is the La Rose Fete, and its rival, La Marguerite. These festivals are represented by two friendly societies, with emblems of the rose and the marguerite flower.
The Rose Fete is a form of folk drama performed by many different groups across the island.
The origins of the more popular festival, La Rose Fete, go back to the times of enslavement when the slaves attempted to compensate for their lack of status by imitating the courts of their masters. Their courts mimicked the royal court and were complete with king, queen, princes and princesses, as well as other court attendants, such as magistrates, nurses and policemen.
Although modern music has invaded St. Lucia via the electronic airwaves, the old culture of music is making a resurgence through Reggae music, which is being composed in the local Patois dialect.
The St. Lucian people also have left their mark on the world in the fields of arts and sciences. St. Lucia has produced the only Nobel Laureates of the West Indies — Sir Arthur Lewis in economics and Derek Walcott in literature. St. Lucian novelist Garth Saint Omer is considered one of the finest prose writers in the English language.
Some of St. Lucia’s Catholic churches have become home to the murals of St. Lucia’s leading artist, Dunstant Saint Omer. He is world famous for his depiction of the black Madonna and other biblical characters including a black Jesus that he has painted.
Omer said that his paintings of the black Christ helped St. Lucians exorcise the restless ghosts of slavery and ushered in an era of spiritual liberation to complement the advent of St. Lucia’s political independence.
He said of his creations, “If I am black and the people of St. Lucia are black and if God is their Father, then in all decency, God must be black. And since His Son conveniently left no evidence of His race, then Christ could be black,” he said.
“As a Christian, I believe that the only way that my people could earn their freedom, being poor, downtrodden, and not technically advanced, would be to be spiritually dominant. It is their spirit from Africa and Roman Catholicism that has sustained them through the dark years, never allowing them to be completely subjugated. It is the accommodation of their God with Christianity that has given them access to the two worlds of their own and that of their former masters; and it is through that spirit that they will survive and triumph.”
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