La Rose Festival in Saint Lucia -Gwan Fèt Lawòz

Viv Lawòz, Viv Lawòz, Viv Lawòz enkor, Viv Lawòz!

Every August 30th for several decades now, Saint Lucia has been celebrating one of its oldest traditions: the Rose Festival.
This Festival is part of a wider context: that of an annual competition with the island’s other national flower: the Marguerite (Margwit), celebrated on October 17th.

For the record, the Rose and the Marguerite are two societies initially created by European administrations - sometimes French, sometimes English - with the aim of evangelizing and entertaining slaves. However, these celebrations soon became the object of a subversive cultural appropriation: these Christian festivals in honor of the patron Saints "St Rose de Lima" and "St Marguerite" were quickly hijacked to "carnivalize" Franco-English rivalries.

The idea being to parody the old royal courts, each community on the island reconstituted its own society. Each member of the participating community group is assigned a profession and dresses up accordingly, in the colors of the rose (red, pink, gold and white). Policemen, magistrates, doctors, nurses, princes, princesses, queens and kings perform songs and plays specially scripted for the occasion.

These artistic works praise the beauty of the rose, while deriding the competing Daisy Festival. The two "societies" - as well as all the island’s communities - compete in good spirits, to the traditional rhythms of guitar, banjo, baha, chakchak and drums.

The event was a real success, bringing together all ages and sectors of society. A group from Martinique was even on hand to celebrate the Rose!
The French Embassy is particularly grateful to the Cultural Development Foundation and the Folk Research Center for keeping the tradition alive and organizing this authentic, colorful festival every year.

See you soon, but this time dressed in mauve and blue to celebrate the Daisy and respond, as it should be, to the taunting of the Rose.