On August 30 each year, Saint Lucia celebrates the La Woz (Rose) Festival and the expectation is that the 2024 event will be one of the grandest.
Ahead of the main event or Gwan Fet, several La Woz séances occur in various communities, and this year has been no different.
On Thursday, Mon Repos will host a grand finale séance featuring La Woz groups from that community as well as Grande Riviere, Choiseul, La Courvile-Micoud, Aux Lyon, Dennery, La Bourne and Vieux Fort.
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The Cultural Development Foundation will present Gwan Fet La Woz in Castries on Friday.
The event will begin with a church service from 10 am at the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.
A grand parade of the groups through the city, accompanied by the traditional music from various folk groups, will follow.
According to the Minister responsible for Culture, Dr. Ernest Hilaire, this year’s La Woz festival will be one of the grandest.
“We are starting off with the traditional church service Friday morning, where we will have the coronation of at least one new La Woz queen,” Hilaire explained.
“After that we will see the parade and the public will get a chance to see La Woz in all its splendor and of course with the presentations at Constitution Park as we have done in the past,” he said.
Dr. Hilaire also responded to criticism of insufficient financial support for La Woz compared to Carnival.
“We have put more money into festivals like La Woz and La Marguerite than ever. Before it was $50,000 and we have since significantly increased that, so there is more support, but I am not saying that there is enough, but there is support,” the Minister said.
“I think the strategic objective for the next couple of years is to build the number of groups, make the groups that exist stronger and start building new groups. This year you will see one more new La Woz group, Desruisseaux will have a group for the first time,” Hilaire revealed.
He explained that the other flower festival, La Marguerite, celebrated in October, was different in terms of participation.
“La Marguerite falls during the school term and all the schools are involved and there is a lot more activity that takes place then, but we are going to continue to increase support and to make it (La Woz) bigger but because of its nature it’s a little difficult comparing it to carnival,” Hilaire said.
The Minister encouraged all Saint Lucians to come out on Friday to support the Gwan Fet La Woz and pledged more support for the festival to help with its continued growth and become a significant attraction in Saint Lucia.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ronald Raoul
I love the flower traditions. It is in the heart of our culture. The beautiful couture, the pomp and ceremony….what I would like to see apart from the flower festivals and journée Kwéyol is a specific day for the wearing of the national dresses on the island. I would like to see Castries and other communities filled with women in the most elaborate couture and the men in their most sophisticated attire. That day should be a day of fine dinning, high culture, music, poetry of Sir Derek Walcott, lectures of Sir Arthur Lewis, dance and traditional music making….but it would be a day for the celebration of the national wear. I once read somewhere that in the late 19th century ( I suspect about 1860s onwards) Castries was filled with women in their fine traditional wear with parasols for shade. What a sight it was to behold said the writer. At that time The Derek Walcott square was known as Place des Arms or Place d’arm. It was there at Place des Arms that a guillotine was set up to execute royalists during the infamous French revolution of 1789. Hence why Saint Lucia earned the name Sainte Lucie la fidèle. That is faithful to the ideas of the revolution of freedom, equality, fraternity. Of course official documents show that French was officially outlawed in 1834 and English because the Lingua Franca since. To my surprise, there was even an opera house in Castries where notable opera singers would come to sing the big opera repertoires, and the locals knew the opera repertoire quite well too. It was known even residents from Martinique would come to Saint Lucia to attend the opera….the building of course was lost to some catastrophe…..I say bring back our national dress day celebrations….