Patrick takes listeners on a journey to St. Lucia, a nation recently celebrated for its first Olympic medal, achieved by Julian Alfred in the 100 meters. The episode explores the historical and geographical context of this Caribbean island, highlighting its colonial past marked by conflict between European powers. The discussion delves into the national anthem, "Sons and Daughters of St. Lucia," crafted by Father Charles Jesse, who also played a significant role in the island's cultural development. Patrick examines the lyrical content, emphasizing themes of patriotism, unity, and hope for the future while reflecting on the island's natural beauty and resilience. Throughout the episode, the intertwining of history, music, and identity showcases the rich cultural tapestry of St. Lucia and its journey towards independence.

I hope you enjoyed it. Irritatingly I have encountered some motorcycle noise in the record but next time I have some ideas. Here are my sources:

1. https://archive.stlucia.gov.lc/saint_lucia/national_anthem/national_anthem_of_saint_lucia.htm 
2. https://sports.yahoo.com/how-julien-alfred-went-from-running-barefoot-in-st-lucia-to-the-fastest-woman-in-the-world-224013986.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAD8Neq-ZG6jbQMTzQ_Ti3ZuRk-vn02AuTbQvDVDTN9ezwnEDNjYDIeFEJky2xaEX8eeesH7U_Of567r-mece_O62rR0U71y1Oa_um4Tmk1Fxrjx9TvAeeO7Li_KKPvA9NJgSI6IBHeV5SiJHyrjweGSnTQCS-fUS22WvtHI0edu0 
3. https://issuu.com/amsstlucia/docs/independence_magazine_2016websv4/24 
4. https://www.ourhistory.org.uk/saint-lucia-colonisation-to-independence/ 
5. https://books.google.com/books?id=xutfBgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PT4073&q=Sons+and+Daughters+of+Saint+Lucia+Charles+Jesse+Leton+Felix+Thomas&hl=en&source=newbks_fb 
6. https://uwispace.sta.uwi.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/80e534d1-d5d1-4236-ae2a-d6ca255509ce/content 
7. https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/athlete/julien-alfred_1537325 
8. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Outlines_of_St_Lucia_s_History/dX9sAAAAMAAJ?hl=en 
9. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Saint_Lucia_the_Romance_of_Its_Place_Nam/W0_lMgEACAAJ?hl=en 
10. https://www.govt.lc/nationalanthem 
11. https://stluciatimes.com/159012/2023/11/national-combined-schools-choir-prepares-for-official-launch/ 
12. Harmsen, Jolien; Ellis, Guy; Devaux, Robert (2014). A History of St Lucia. Vieux Fort: Lighthouse Road.
13. https://stluciaconsulate.ca/about-saint-lucia/national-symbols/ 
14. https://www.govt.lc/news/kw-y-l-national-anthem-approved 
15. https://culturalheritageofsaintlucia.wordpress.com/music/st-lucias-national-anthem/ 
16. https://archive.stlucia.gov.lc/saint_lucia/saintluciaconstitution/the_saint_lucia_constitution.htm 
17. https://stluciatimes.com/161120/2024/01/saint-lucia-government-pays-tribute-to-sir-leton-thomas/
18. https://stluciatimes.com/160987/2024/01/pierre-extends-condolences-on-death-of-sir-leton-thomas/
19. https://saintluciaconsulateny.org/about-saint-lucia 
20. https://britishonlinearchives.com/collections/73/volumes/509/st-lucia-1828-1938?filters[query]=&filters[className]=document 
21. http://www.geographia.com/st-lucia/lchis01.htm 
22. https://www.iexplore.com/articles/travel-guides/caribbean/st-lucia/history-and-culture 
23. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/saint-lucia/ 
24. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19833213 
25. https://www.stlucia.org/en/discover-saint-lucia/history-culture/ 
26. http://saintluciamissionun.org/about-saint-lucia/ 
27. https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/caribbean-breaking-news-featured/st-lucia-cabinet-adopts-kweyol-version-of-national-anthem/ 
28. https://www.britannica.com/place/Saint-Lucia/History 
29. https://www.embassyofstlucia.org/history-of-saint-lucia 
30. https://www.oasismarigot.com/st-lucia-island/explore/history-culture/ 
31. https://salcc.edu.lc/sir-leton-thomas.php 
32. https://stluciafacts.weebly.com/interesting-and-fun-facts-about-st-lucia.html 
33. https://nationalanthemart.com/Saint-Lucia 
34. https://www.indexmundi.com/saint_lucia/religions.html#:~:text=Religions%3A%20Roman%20Catholic%2061.5%25%2C,%25%2C%20unspecified%201.4%25%20(2010 
35. https://www.state.gov/reports/2024-investment-climate-statements/saint-lucia/#:~:text=Saint%20Lucia%20remains%20vulnerable%20to,by%20the%20end%20of%202024. 
36. https://shaftesbury-remembers.goldhillmuseum.org.uk/story/charles-jesse/

Hello and welcome to the Anthems podcast. I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

Today we are traveling roughly 1.2 times the length of the Nile river.

If we were to take that journey at the maximum speed of the Nile's flow, we'd be screaming downstream at 3.1 meter/second because 7 not an impressive sounding speed.

And in this case that would mean that, you know, I was talking about St. Lucia and we are back in island paradise territory. Why are we here? Well, I mean, I guess volcanoes, because that's what makes islands.

Julian Alfred became the fastest woman in the world when she ran the 100 meters dash in 10.72 seconds to win the gold medal and secure the national record in St. Lucia.

I know that you excellent podcast listeners are the kind of nerds that need to know that this means, at least for some of that sprint, she was going very nearly 21 mph. That is a speed that gets me right to the point where I get to tell you about sons and daughters of St. Lucia. St.

Lucia I admittedly knew nothing about at all before going into the episode, at least in a specific historical sense or geographic. Because some stuff I did know in broad strokes.

After all, this is a country in my sub series chronicling the downfall of colonialism, for some reason, in St. Lucia they settled on still officially having a foreign sovereign. So Charles in charge, I guess. But we'll hear more on that shortly.

And that is a callback that only at least 40 year old listeners in the US might get. So while a bunch of you are left wondering what I'm talking about sometimes enjoy the two minutes and 3 seconds of anthem.

Hash. The land has gave us love. Land of beaches, hills and bodies. Wherever I wheresoever you never.

Hash. I.

Know this when strife and discontinued the children's fall and rest on the last of bright again stretches out you wait be the goodness of ho and on may all be good, united strong in soul and strong enough just. It's truth and charity all I give forever.

My first impression is that I like it as an anthem, but I'm not sure I've found a version of the song that gets my foot tapping, if you know what I mean.

The problem for me here, which has become kind of common problem for me, is finding something that lets us hear a good example of the music and the lyrics. Because there's usually both four sons and daughters, we get a choir driven piece because it was the best quality version I could find.

An acquire lets us hear the music and the lyrics together in, you know, at least most of the way. Were any of you guys ever in a choir? Cause I was not. And that's mostly because I am enthusiastic at singing, but I'm pretty far from good.

And I do have middle school chorus to reminisce about.

But we're not gonna do that because it's not as interesting in finding out where in the world you'd be if you were a member of the combined national Youth choir of St. Lucia. We are again talking about a country in the Caribbean.

So, roughly speaking, it's somewhere along the chain of islands to the east of Central America. That chain is, in fact, the boundary line of volcanic islands that defines the Caribbean Sea.

More specifically, it is part of the windward island chain of the Lesser Antilles. The closest mainland country to St. Lucia is Venezuela, about 234 miles south and maybe 30 degrees to the west. The closest island neighbors are St.

Vincent. They're to the south, southeast, Barbados to the southwest, and Martinique to the north. St. Lucia is a pretty small place, coming in at 238 sq. Mi.

Or 616.4 km squared, which is just a little more than half the size of Hong Kong. It's a mostly forested and mountainous place. Remember, St. Lucia is volcanic. It has the enviable year round temperature of a brown, about 80 degrees.

So it's just kind of nice. It does rain for, like, half the year, though.

The island is fortunate enough to have a World Heritage site called the pythons, and it's another place that you should look up because it's quite stunning looking. These peaks also lead me to describe this episode's new geology term, a volcanic plug.

They're also called volcanic necks, which I think is a bit more descriptive, since what it is is a vent or a volcano that has some magma hardened into it that can lead to dramatic landscapes and dramatic eruptions if there is a magma buildup under it, that becomes volatile. But as far as I know, there is currently no dramatic eruption. Building under St.

Lucia, and I bet that the people that live there are relieved about that. So where do we start? The story? The history of humanity on St.

So my hand is sort of forced on where I'm going to join the storyline, and we're going to begin at the start of the 17th century. That is when an english ship got blown off course and 67 people decided that St. Lucia was home.

Now, however, disease and repeated attacks from the Carib people who were already living there forced the 19 people who were left alive to flee.

Over the next 30 or so years, colonial interest in the Caribbean grew, with England, France and other powers making claims to large swathes of the region that led to competing claims for places, and kind of unsurprisingly, were concerned with the competing english and french claims for St. Lucia.

Now, since this is not that kind of podcast, im not going to go through the fine details of nearly 150 year back and forth between these two countries, but weve got to get a thumbnail at least, because, in my opinion, its the largest driving force that shaped the history of the nation, especially during the time that it was happening. The rest of the 17th century saw attempts at establishing settlements on purpose, and this came with more disease and fighting.

The island's position as such a frequently fought over place earned it the nickname the Helen of the west, because, like Helen of Troy, she sparked a war duo to her desirability and beauty. Of course, this did not come without having an effect on the population.

Then things just kind of got quiet in the historical record. I know that stuff happened, but it's not accessible to this podcast host in a usable fashion.

I had trouble finding out his birthday, but I did learn that his parents were William, Jess, and Kate Rose and that he was baptized into the catholic church on the 20 March the same year that he was born. So there's only a three month span where he could have been born.

As is usually the case with anthem poets, there is little to be had regarding Charles as a youth, but I do know that he attended Shaftesbury Grammar School and he had at least two brothers. All three of the brothers, Jesse, Percy, Charles and Frank, enlisted and served in World War one.

At some point his health began to decline and although the record is not real clear why it got him transferred into the engineering division as a sapper. The change of job apparently did not change his health for the better, and he was declared medically unfit.

Again, the history is kind of vague, but at some point Charles became Father Charles, a catholic priest, because apparently one of these guys is in almost every anthem story. He also became an author and wrote an extremely popular contemporary history of St.

Lucia along with a number of other books all about his adopted nation. In fact, his books were so no well known and regarded that when St.

Charles was honored with an MBE or a member of the British Empire. It is an honor that you actually gotta go to Buckingham palace to receive and get directly from the king or queen.

The change might have been what prompted the country to join a couple of fairly short lived island confederations in the late sixties and early seventies. But they ended up in the Windward and Leeward Islands novel configuration known as associated statehood, which is when they gained self governance.

That arrangement, of course, came to an end with the establishment of the island nation as a constitutional monarchy, retaining the british king or queen as the official head of state, but otherwise existing completely independently. Now let's hear about one of the people that was involved a bit in developing the St lucian education system and their culture.

Music was always a big part of his life, though, and he continued to study it throughout, including as a young student and then at some point somewhere in the UK. But the record is kind of unclear there. After returning to St Lucia, he went into public service and he stayed there for 40 years.

During that span, he was a trainer of teachers, an educational reformer, the chief education officer through four education ministers. Then he was appointed as a senator and served as the Minister of public service reform in the office of the prime minister.

Kind of an incredible resume.

Throughout all of his efforts in public service, Sir Thomas was also an avid and skillful musician, serving as the choral director and organist for the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Castries. St. Lucia for many years.

And I did in fact watch the entire thing because I am a dedicated podcaster and there was some good information about the man in there. So now we know about the Poethenne, we know about the composer, and we know how St.

Lucia became independent and chose the national anthem, which means that we are ready to discuss the song itself. Musically speaking. We've got another anthem that is made for the people.

That is to say, it is a piece that is accessible for the average person to be able to sing, play, and memorize. These are my favorite kinds of anthems because I feel like everyone in a nation should be able to take part in the national song.

Reflecting that, we have a tune generally performed in the key of f major or g major. They're common anthem keys because they are bright and uplifting.

A major tonality also accommodates a wide range of low and high voices to encourage communal singing. Continuing along with the theme of accessibility, we have a composition that is in four four time, or what I just learned I can call common time.

It's generally played at a moderate 80 to 90 beats per minute, nice, steady sort of march.

It's easy to follow, and it instills some kind of an order to the thing melodically, mostly stepwise motion with a couple of fun little jumps in there, and we get symmetrical four bar phrasing that is common in western music and especially in anthems.

It's like Sir Thomas knew I was going to be writing about it decades after he composed it and tailored the composition to be as anthem esque as possible.

There is even a primarily one four five harmony with standard progressions to help evoke a feeling of unity from this traditionally choir or brass band performed song were left with a well crafted piece of music that balances simplicity and grandeur. Its harmonic structure, major key tonality, and accessible melody makes it suitable for large scale public performances.

While its lyrics and musical dynamics evoke pride and unity, the anthem succeeds in creating a musical embodiment of St. Lucian identity, offering a dignified yet celebratory reflection of the nation's people and values.

It's pretty good stuff, even if I couldn't find a version that I wanted to bop my head to. Poetically, we can see that Charles Jesse is another in a growing list of people on my show that totally understood the assignment.

I'll talk to the content of the lyrics after I read through them, but structurally, this is an anthem that I enjoy, if not terribly complicated. First, it is a fairly short thing at just 18 lines of text, making it easy for people to memorize.

Second, it has a consistent and not incredibly complicated rhyming scheme, a b c b diphthere, and I think that this one goes a long way in giving the words a rhythm all their own before you even get a melody or instrumentation to it of any kind. A song for the people, indeed. So I'm going to read through and then we'll hear about the content of the lyrics.

This anthem is originally written in English, but there is an official version of the anthem in St. Lucian Creole. Now the anthem sons and daughters of St.

Lucia love the land that gave us birth land of beaches, hills and valleys, fairest isle of all the earth, wheresoever you may roam love, o love, our island home gone the times when nations battled for this Helen of the west gone the days when strife and discord dimmed her children's toil and rest dawns at last a brighter day stretches out a glad new way. May the good Lord bless our island, guard her sons from woe and harm.

May our people live united, strong in soul and strong in arm justice, truth and charity, our ideal forever beverage. The first verse of the anthem focuses on a deep sense of patriotism and connection to the natural beauty of St. Lucia.

It addresses the sons and daughters of the island, calling them to cherish their homeland regardless of where they may go. This got me lost learning about the word diaspora. It means the dispersed population from an originating geographic location, like, uh, all of the St.

Lucian people who do not live in St. Lucia. It comes from a greek verb for I scatter. It's interesting stuff that I spent way too long reading about. So moving on.

The imagery of beaches, hills, and valleys paints a picture of a diverse and idyllic landscape, evoking a sense of pride in the physical beauty of the island. Describing St. Lucia as the fairest island of all the earth adds a personal and emotional layer.

Charles is implying that no other land can compare to the one that gave its people birth.

The words are less flowery than they are direct, at least through most of the writing, and I appreciate that the line love, o love, our island home reinforces the idea of loyalty and affection for the island, a bond that the anthem wants to transcend distance or time. In the second verse, the anthem shifts from natural beauty to a reflection on St.

Lucia's tumultuous history that we can note, was entirely caused by England and France fighting over an already populated island that was thousands of miles away from France or England. The lyrics refer to the conflicts of the past, acknowledging those days that brought so much strife and discord to its people.

However, the tone quickly turns to hope with the promise of a brighter day and a glad new way. This shift symbolizes a departure from conflict and hardship toward a future filled with peace and progress. The future for places like St.

Lucia is bright enough, with the State Department in the US forecasting slow but steady economic growth for the nation, mostly based on tourism and a little bit of banana farming. However, it is a sad fact that small island nations like this remain really, really, really vulnerable to climate change.

So vote if you can, wherever you are in the world, and I guess donate money to the right spot if you've got some. And you know how to do that, because what, what else are we able to do anyway? Overall, the second verse suggests that while St.

Lucia's past was marked by battles and challenges, the future holds the promise of unity and prosperity for its people, regardless of what may come. The final verse is a prayerful appeal for divine protection and guidance, asking for the good Lord to bless St.

Lucia and protect his people from harm. The spiritual plea reflects a desire for the island to remain safe, for its citizens to live in harmony.

Here we again have an almost entirely christian population in St. Lucia, very nearly 93% of them.

Keep in mind that the man who wrote this was a catholic priest, but honestly, it's not like this sounds like a hymn or anything. It's pretty low key religious for what we have heard before and what we will hear again.

The mention of living united, strong in soul and strong in arm speaks to both the physical and spiritual strength of the people, calling for a resilient and cohesive nation. The closing lines emphasize the importance of justice, truth and charity, presenting these as values that will guide St. Lucia into the future.

This final verse ties together the themes of faith, unity and moral integrity, serving as a hopeful and inspiring conclusion to the anthem. It wraps things up really nicely, musically and lyrically.

Sons and daughters is kind of exactly an anthem, and the gentlemen that were picked to write the thing made it happen just like they needed to. Story wise. I'm not super sure this time there was a timeline.

Things felt cohesive, and in some way the story of this anthem kind of starts when it was written, and that's mostly where I end these shows in other ways. Yes, it did start when british and French started killing each other, and somehow it started with the lives of the people that were involved.

But what is in the story is another bit of the narrative about the fall of colonialism and a peek at another place that is honestly just stunning to look at and that the people seem great. So go there if you can. Swing and take it. Maybe. For now, I think we're gonna go to the credits.

The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me, and I wrote and played the theme music.

The music was played with my permission, unless otherwise noted, the anthem's iPlayer public domain stuff, or some other equivalently free to play license.

And this time I again did not ask anybody, mostly because this version of the anthem is everywhere and so ubiquitous that I can't find the performers. I did try, though.

You should follow me on Facebook when I post. It's a post about the show and we're at the end of another one of those things right now.

For now, I'm going to try to get the episode shared on whatever platform I can with the hashtag anthemspod because this is a mostly word of mouth operation. So it would be cool if you hashtagged a post like that too.

And it might also mean that you drop a spoon and it sounds out the first few bars of something that Bach composed. Not a life changing event, but it would be a cool one, right?

As always, you can email me corrections, comments, concerns, suggestions, ideas, instructions on how to do awesome things and even ask me questions@anthemspodmail.com.

Maybe that website cameo gives you a freebie and you use it to get a famous person to plug this very episode. But even if all you do is listen to another one, I'm kind of a fan, and we're going to do this again soon.