I've already mentioned soca, which I actually liked pretty well. It's very upbeat, kind of dance-music-ish. One time on a reggae bus we heard a Soca-ized blend of old Sunday School songs. "This Little Light of Mine," "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In," "I'm Gonna Sing, Sing Sing..." and others, all set to this techno beat...I was really tempted to sing along, but I was sitting in a bus full of strangers and I think Eric would have crawled under the seat to get away from me if I had started singing, so I refrained.

The thing is if I weren't so obviously an American tourist, it would not have been out of the ordinary for me to burst into song at all. The locals sing along with the radio, sweetly and completely unselfconsciously, everywhere they go. T Here at home, only small children walk around in public singing out loud, and we all smile at them and think how cute they are. An adult who walked around in public singing out loud would be considered annoying or strange, at best, and possibly seriously mentally challenged. In Grenada, though, the locals sing at any time or any place. The waiter bringing your meal or the checker behind the counter might suddenly burst into song while completing your transaction.

And as far as what they sing, besides soca, the other favorite music of the islands seems to be 1990s easy listening hits. You hear Celine Dion everywhere. Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Whitney Houston. The kind of thing that no one who considers themselves even slightly "hip" listens to anymore in America. It is BIG in Grenada. Meg swears that she once saw an entire group of men digging a ditch--big, sweaty, manly men--singing their hearts out as they worked to "My Heart Will Go On."