Sun, sea and all that jazz: during the Saint Lucia music festival in May, the island will dance to an irresistible beat – with previous line-ups such as Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Rihanna

We all know that music is essential to Caribbean life – and that two rhythms prevail. There is reggae from Jamaica in the west and calypso from Trinidad in the southeast. But jazz?

Well, the Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary and I would do anything to be there, if last year's is anything to go by.

It has an unapologetically broad reach to attract the widest range of visitors possible. Previous lineups have included Santana, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Rihanna.

The festival takes place between April 30 and May 12, which is after the winter season but before the Caribbean becomes stiflingly hot. So there will be music, fashion, art – and sunshine – all over the island.

This year the structure consists of an evening of gospel singing and two evenings billed as Pure Jazz (including steel band jazz, American bassist John Patitucci and two-time Grammy-winning singer Samara Joy).

The event culminates over three nights at the main venue Pigeon Point in the far north – first with Caribbean Fusion, featuring bands and rhythms from the region; then World Beats, which flies in artists from elsewhere (this year adding Latin singer Jon Secada to the popular Afro-Beat lineup).

Finally, the headline act, in which Sting and Shaggy renewed their collaboration in 2018 in 2023. This year it will all come from the Love rock duo Air Supply.

A good place to stay is Windjammer Landing, from where we are taken to Pigeon Point in a ten-minute boat ride. If the historic point, a small island connected to the mainland by a man-made dike, was once a fortress, it now feels decidedly unwarlike. Saint Lucians of all ages and visitors all flock there. And it becomes unapologetically lively.

Windjammer Landing (pictured) is a short boat ride from Pigeon Point, making it a good base for the festival

Previous lineups have included Santana, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Rihanna (above)

Of course you visit Lucia for other reasons. For example, there is a burgeoning chocolate industry, and in the capital Castries we were guided through a 'bean to bar' chocolate experience on the veranda of the Victorian Howelton House, in the middle of a lush, tropical eight-acre estate. . We pounded cocoa beans in a heated mortar, stirred in sugar and cocoa butter, and poured the fragrant mixture into a mold. While it cooled we drank fresh soursop juice and enjoyed beautiful views of the charming town.

Only 14 miles in diameter and exceptionally mountainous, it's hard to imagine Saint Lucia having a slow-flowing river, but we were whisked onto bamboo rafts for three miles between the forested banks of the meandering Roseau.

On the coast, the hilly sands of Roseau Beach lead down the stream to a mangrove forest. We entered an atmospheric cave of trees, which resembled a green cathedral. Lunch was served on the beach under an awning, between dives in the sparkling sea.

Saint Lucia's terrain makes driving from one end of the island to the other slow and arduous, so the best way to visit the iconic twin peaks, the Pitons, in the south is on a day-long boat trip. We joined KnottyGirl Speed ​​Boat Tours, which makes stops along the way.

Saint Lucia's iconic twin Pitons (pictured) are 'one of the Caribbean's most impressive sights and best seen from the sea'

Above, visitors take a mud bath in Saint Lucia's sulphurous hot springs

At Anse Chastanet we dove in to snorkel around the reef and I found myself swimming among thousands and thousands of fish, each an inch long and shimmering around me like smoke. They darted chaotically back and forth as I moved, then immediately aligned themselves in their schools.

Around the headland the Pitons flew out of the coast like enormous incisors. They are one of the Caribbean's most impressive sights and are best seen from the sea. They were once the walls of a volcano. Now the almost dormant underworld seeps into sulphurous hot springs.

We bathed in gray volcanic mud (good for the skin apparently), before rinsing off and cooling off in the Toraille Waterfall, a challenge involving an 60-foot ice bucket.

There is talk about how AI will succeed in creating music, especially jazz. But as I left the island with the sound of Sting's Roxanne and a raspy Shaggy's Boombastic ringing in my ears, I decided we were safe… at least for a while.