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Tolly Boys: the Sint Maarten bouyon schoolchildren sang in class

Published October 20, 2026

The Tolly Boys are a bouyon act from Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of Saint Martin, documented in two ways that competing profiles almost never bring together. On one side, the platforms: under the name Tolly Boy’s YMW, fast singles released between late 2018 and early 2020, “Get on Bad”, “Oú Paté Vwey” and “GoDownGoDown”, written by Youry Fleming, then a label, YMW Tolly Boys, still releasing records in 2023, 2024 and 2025, among them the records of Wizito, written by Bernard Gumbs. On the other side, an academic study of a primary school on Sint Maarten, which describes the Tolly Boys as local performers of bouyon music and recounts schoolchildren singing their most famous song in the yard and in the classroom. This profile assembles those two records, and it starts with a distinction everything else depends on: Tolly Boys, with an o, are not Tallyboy, with an a, the Saint Lucia solo artist who has his own page on this site.

Who the Tolly Boys are: a circle act, one name, one songwriter

The Tolly Boys are a bouyon act from Saint Martin, and their name travels under several published forms that first have to be untangled. The platform singles are credited to Tolly Boy’s YMW, with an apostrophe and Boy in the singular. The label releasing the records of the circle is called YMW Tolly Boys, in the plural. The academic study of Sint Maarten simply writes Tolly Boys and describes them as local performers of bouyon music. This profile keeps the name Tolly Boys for the act, Tolly Boy’s YMW for the artist credit on the singles, and YMW Tolly Boys for the label, exactly as the sources publish them.

The proper name that holds this circle is that of a songwriter: Youry Fleming, also credited under the reversed forms Fleming Youry and Fleming xavier Youry. Shazam credits him as songwriter of the three Tolly Boy’s YMW singles: “Get on Bad” in 2018, “Oú Paté Vwey” in 2019 and “GoDownGoDown” in 2020. The same first name returns in the circle under the form Youry Ymw, as featured artist on the Wizito record “Payé” in 2023. This profile presents Youry Fleming as the documented songwriter of the circle, without claiming a leader or member role the sources do not state: in the carnival musics of small islands, the published songwriter credit is often the only organigram available, and it already speaks.

Around that songwriter, the credits draw a working circle rather than a published fixed line up. Ciio and King Kembe are the featured artists on “Get on Bad”. Bilix shares the record “Bay Li” with YMW in 2020. Bernard Gumbs, known as Wizito, releases his records on the label of the circle in 2023, 2024 and 2025. No source consulted publishes a member list for the Tolly Boys, a biography of the group, or a presentation interview. This profile therefore documents a circle act: a name, a central songwriter, recurring guests from the same Saint Martin basin, and a home label that serves as its civil registry.

The geography, on the other hand, is published by the academic study: Sint Maarten, the Dutch part of the island of Saint Martin, shared with the French part of the same name. Our bouyon in Saint Martin page tells the place of that double island in the circulation of the genre, between the English speaking Caribbean, the French Antilles and the neighbouring carnivals. The Tolly Boys appear there as a local product of that circulation: a bouyon sung by the children of the island, released by a label of the island, and classed by platforms in the fast categories of carnival musics.

The Sint Maarten study: Tolly Boys bouyon inside a classroom

The most unusual source in this record is neither a platform nor a music outlet: it is an academic article titled “An educated Sint Maartener?”, devoted to national belonging in a primary school on Sint Maarten, published in the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education. The ethnographer there observes how global and local musics enter the classroom. Among them, the article names the Tolly Boys and describes them, in a note, as local performers of bouyon. Pupils sang their songs spontaneously, played them on their phones and, when the teacher was away, on the school computer.

The article goes further, and that is what makes it a source no competing profile cites: it names the most famous song of the group as observed in the field. When a pupil, Emanuel, sings the most famous Tolly Boys song, the article quotes the hook, “Tolly she want, tolly she go and get”, noting in brackets that the word tolly is local slang for penis, while the pupil grinds against a doorpost, to the displeasure of the teacher, who wanted decency. The scene is told plainly by the researcher, and it stands as a document: before their platform singles, the Tolly Boys were already the forbidden and beloved soundtrack of a Sint Maarten schoolyard.

That academic testimony fixes two things platform listings cannot fix. First, seniority: the fieldwork observation of the study predates the 2018 to 2020 run of singles, which means the local fame of the group comes before its discography as published on the platforms consulted. Second, nature: Tolly Boys bouyon is a music of proximity, learned by the children of the neighbourhood, carried by phones and the short videos of the time, and loaded enough with slang and dance to worry a teacher. It is bouyon as the lived culture of an island, not as an export product.

This profile cites that study with its limits. It documents one school, one moment and one reception, not a biography: it gives neither the names of the members, nor the formation date of the group, nor the official title of the most famous song, of which only the hook is quoted. The hook “Tolly she want” is therefore not turned here into a song title. It is reported as what it is in the source: the line Sint Maarten schoolchildren sang, and by which a researcher recognised, inside a classroom, the local bouyon of the Tolly Boys.

The Tolly Boy’s YMW singles: Get on Bad, Oú Paté Vwey, GoDownGoDown

The first single published under the name Tolly Boy’s YMW in the sources consulted is “Get on Bad”, featuring Ciio and King Kembe, released on December 30, 2018, by 1087489 Records DK2. Shazam gives it a tempo of 174 BPM, the fastest in this record, and credits Youry Fleming as songwriter. 174 beats per minute is the extreme territory of carnival musics, that of records built for the road and for the moving fete. King Kembe, one of the guests, is a name of the Saint Martin carnival circuit, which anchors the single in the basin of the island from the very first listing.

The second single is “Oú Paté Vwey”, released on February 14, 2019, by YMW, at 162 BPM according to Shazam. The songwriter credit there is published under the form Fleming xavier Youry, the fullest form of the name of the songwriter of the circle. The title, in the mixed English and French based Creole spoken on Saint Martin, belongs to the same family as the party titles in this record: a street phrase, thrown out as a hook. This profile does not translate that title beyond what its language shows, because no published source glosses it, and it leaves it in its platform spelling, accent included.

The third single is “GoDownGoDown”, released on January 19, 2020, by YMW, at 169 BPM according to Shazam, with a songwriter credit to Fleming Youry. The title, written as one word, states its programme: go down, dance low, the universal vocabulary of bouyon dancefloors. In a little over a year, the three singles draw a readable signature: published tempos from 162 to 174 BPM, one single credited songwriter, a label moving from a distribution structure to the home brand YMW, and guests from the same Saint Martin circuit. That is few records, but each one has a date, a label, a tempo and a credit that can be checked, which is the exact material of a record for an emerging act turned local reference.

The circle releases one more record in 2020 that has to be classed with care: “Bay Li”, by YMW and Bilix, released on July 14, 2020, by YMW X BILIX, at 157 BPM, written by YMW and Franck Offranc, produced by DWAYNE SKERRIT and Anne Arrindell. The music video header on its Shazam page reads “TOLLY BOYS & BILIX - BAY LI”, which ties the record to the circle, but the published artist credit is YMW and Bilix, not Tolly Boy’s YMW. This profile therefore cites “Bay Li” as a record of the YMW circle, documented in the text, and does not place it in the structured data of the act Tolly Boy’s YMW. The distinction is the rule of this site: a published neighbourhood counts as context, not as catalogue.

The YMW Tolly Boys label, 2023 to 2025: Wizito and Bernard Gumbs

The published story of the name does not stop at the 2018 to 2020 singles. The label YMW Tolly Boys, also written YMW TOLLY BOYS in capitals, releases a new generation of records in the 2020s: “Payé”, by Wizito featuring Youry Ymw, on February 8, 2023; “Love Me”, by Wizito, on February 14, 2024; and “TunTun”, by Wizito with Ti Al and Dj Chimik, on August 1, 2025. That continuity across seven years, from the Tolly Boy’s YMW singles to the Wizito records, makes the name Tolly Boys something other than a schoolyard memory: an active label and circle, still releasing.

The junction point between the two eras is Youry. The songwriter of the Tolly Boy’s YMW singles returns in 2023 as featured artist on “Payé”, under the form Youry Ymw. And the songwriter name that dominates the second era is that of Bernard Gumbs: credited as songwriter of “Love Me” and “TunTun”, and under the long form Bernard Robert Gumbs on “Payé”. This site gives Bernard Gumbs, known as Wizito, his own page, where those three records are documented in detail, with their published producers, Sylvio Benjamin for “Love Me” and Dj Chimik for “TunTun”. This profile does not reassign them to the Tolly Boys: they belong to the catalogue of Wizito, released by the label of the circle.

That architecture, a founding act turned label, is a classic form of the island scenes this site documents. The name that carried the party records of the late 2010s becomes the house that releases the songwriters of the next generation, still at the same fast tempos, still for the same northern Caribbean carnival circuit. A published St Maarten Carnival 2024 mix also kept “Love Me” by Wizito among the local releases for that carnival, as the Bernard Gumbs page details: the next generation of the circle plays in the same carnival where schoolchildren once sang the Tolly Boys.

To place that path in the long history of the genre, our history of bouyon page recalls that bouyon was born in Dominica, with WCK, and that its bouyon soca branch, started by Dada in 2003 according to the signed testimony of Sean “Smokiller” Francis, a Dominican-born producer, became the travelling form of the genre. The Tolly Boys belong to the generation of the northern islands that grew up with that travelling bouyon and remade it in its own local sauce: Sint Maarten slang, extreme tempos, and a name children knew before the platforms did.

Tolly Boys are not Tallyboy, and what this profile does not yet know

The most important distinction on this page holds in one vowel. Tolly Boys, with an o, is the Sint Maarten act and circle documented here: the Tolly Boy’s YMW singles, the songwriter Youry Fleming, the label YMW Tolly Boys. Tallyboy, with an a, is a different solo artist, from Saint Lucia, with his own catalogue and his own page on this site. Platforms and search engines happily mix the two names, and both acts work in the fast carnival musics of the same region, which keeps the confusion alive. This site separates them strictly: no Tallyboy record is credited to the Tolly Boys, no Tolly Boys record is credited to Tallyboy, and the label YMW Tolly Boys has no published link with the Saint Lucia artist.

The blanks in the record are then written here, as on every page of this site. No source consulted publishes the member list of the Tolly Boys, their full names beyond the songwriter credit of Youry Fleming, a formation date or place for the group, or an interview. It is not known whether Tolly Boy’s YMW will release new singles under its own name after “GoDownGoDown” in 2020, the name having continued as a label. No verified official account of the act was confirmed during this research, so this page links to no social profile and no platform artist page.

Why the Tolly Boys matter, despite that thin record, holds in one sentence: they are one of the very few bouyon acts whose local fame is documented by a source independent of the music industry, an academic field study, before even their platform discography. The Sint Maarten schoolchildren who sang “Tolly she want” in their classroom say, better than any press release, what bouyon is on the northern islands: a music of neighbourhood, slang and dance, passed from child to child. The three verified singles and the seven years of the YMW Tolly Boys label then give that name a discography and a continuity this profile could write without inventing anything.

In the meantime, listening follows the order of the record. Start with “Get on Bad”, with Ciio and King Kembe, for the fastest tempo and the carnival anchor. Continue with “Oú Paté Vwey” and “GoDownGoDown”, the two home label singles of 2019 and 2020. Then move to the second era of the name, the Wizito records released by YMW Tolly Boys, documented on the Bernard Gumbs page, and keep the two names separate in your head: Tolly Boys for Sint Maarten, Tallyboy for Saint Lucia. Our bouyon playlist gathers the new releases Bouyon Shattaz follows across the northern Caribbean.

Frequently asked questions

Are Tolly Boys and Tallyboy the same artist?

No, and it is the most frequent confusion on this name. Tolly Boys, with an o, is the Sint Maarten bouyon act documented here, behind the Tolly Boy’s YMW singles and the label YMW Tolly Boys, around songwriter Youry Fleming. Tallyboy, with an a, is a different solo artist, from Saint Lucia, who has his own page on this site. Not the same person, not the same island, not the same catalogue.

Who writes the Tolly Boys songs?

The credits published by Shazam give Youry Fleming as songwriter of the three Tolly Boy’s YMW singles: “Get on Bad” in 2018, “Oú Paté Vwey” in 2019, where the name is published under the form Fleming xavier Youry, and “GoDownGoDown” in 2020, under the form Fleming Youry. The same Youry returns in 2023 as a featured artist, under the form Youry Ymw, on “Payé” by Wizito.

Which Tolly Boy’s YMW records are verified?

Three singles are documented by published listings: “Get on Bad”, with Ciio and King Kembe, released on December 30, 2018, “Oú Paté Vwey”, released on February 14, 2019, by YMW, and “GoDownGoDown”, released on January 19, 2020, by YMW. Their published tempos run from 162 to 174 BPM according to Shazam. The record “Bay Li”, by YMW and Bilix in 2020, is a record of the circle, cited in this profile but not credited to Tolly Boy’s YMW.

What is the most famous Tolly Boys song?

According to the academic study carried out in a primary school on Sint Maarten, the most famous song of the group is the one whose hook the schoolchildren sang: “Tolly she want, tolly she go and get”, the study noting that tolly is local slang for penis. The study does not publish the official title of that song, and this site does not invent one for it: the quoted hook is the published trace of that song.

What is YMW Tolly Boys?

YMW Tolly Boys, also written YMW TOLLY BOYS, is the label published on the recent records of the circle: “Payé” by Wizito with Youry Ymw in 2023, “Love Me” by Wizito in 2024 and “TunTun” by Wizito with Ti Al and Dj Chimik in 2025. The 2019 and 2020 singles of Tolly Boy’s YMW already come out under the YMW brand. The label therefore carries the name of the Sint Maarten act into a second generation of records, among them those of Bernard Gumbs, known as Wizito.

Where do the Tolly Boys come from?

The academic study that documents them describes them as local performers of bouyon on Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of the island of Saint Martin, where schoolchildren sang their songs in class. That is the published geographic tie of the group. No source consulted, on the other hand, gives its member list or its precise place of formation, and this site does not invent them.

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