Elvis Levenston

My name is Elvis Levenston — born on Saba, lived here for some time, some years. My passion is Saba, letting people know about the island, the history and everything, and I also sing at different functions. The biggest one is the carnival. We have a carnival in July. It's music, food, parades, costumes. Sometimes we even have groups from overseas join us. I also do performances on the other islands. I sing soul, R&B, country, reggae, jazz, gospel, the works.

I grew up here, the life was fantastic. People would dress in the Saba fashions and culture. Like with the hats, you know, the men would have these wide hats and the women would have long dresses, you know, the Saba way. I left to go to school. I got an associate degree, but I came back. The heart is always home, you know?

We call it the “unspoiled queen,” unspoiled queen Saba. It's a special, special place. We have the nature foundation, it was a great help to keep certain things intact. Because once the nature is gone, what would people come to see? Where I live in The Bottom on the road going to Well's Bay and Ladder Bay, I'm in nature all the time. I could just go up the hill, and I'm in nature. Sometimes I go to Ladder Bay. Just quiet, relaxing. And while I'm keeping my goats, ideas come to me. So I love nature. I love the big city too, but I love nature.

There is no place in the world so unique as Saba. Zero violence, no one to rob you or steal from you, so it's the ideal spot to come to relax. You can do diving, you can do hiking, you come relax from the outer world, you know?

Right now I'm working on songs for the carnival. So I'm writing some lyrics; I write my own music. We have a calypso competition, so I'm writing a song for the calypso competition. We also have a genre called soca. Soca is the fast type of calypso. You ever heard the song "Turn Me On?" That's soca. I'm very shy when I go on stage, but I open up because I love singing, I like performing. I get stage fright often now. I'm trying to learn to overcome it. I'm very shy, but I love sales and I love speaking to people.

I'm an entrepreneur. I buy fish and then export it to Sint Maarten and the local goat meat, I export that. We have red snapper and we have goat meat. That's one of the specials. Then we have oxtail, it's from the cow. What we do is we blend Caribbean cuisine with American cuisine. You know, like Indian cuisine, because there's also a lot of Trinidadians here, Jamaicans here. So the food is blended. You have to taste a good goat meat — we call that curry goat. I also keep goats, and sell them to Sint Maarten. I love sales, you know? I have that entrepreneur drive. If someone were to give me a million dollars, but they’d take away that drive, I’d say, "Well keep your millions." Because without that drive, I'm just zero.