[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n
Profile of Tanny & The Boys string band<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The band is named after its once bandleader Nathaniel \u201cTanny\u201d Davis. Tanny played music for nearly 50 years before retiring in the 1990s (his banjo was made in St. Martin by Albert Cocks and is over 40 years old). He also played the \u201ccuatro,\u201d a small four-string guitar. Tanny, born in Anguilla in 1930 and reared in St. Martin, founded the now defunct string band, Beach Island Stars. The Stars was formed in the late 1960s and included fellows like Hignet Rogers, Ebel Gumbs, Federico \u201cCulebra\u201d Smith, and the late George \u201cPapang\u201d Henson, Alfred \u201cDemon Devil\u201d Lloyd and Abraham Thomas. Federico \u201cCulebra\u201d Nathaniel Smith, now in his mid-70s, is considered by the band and the folks of St. Martin to be Tanny & The Boys\u2019 main attraction. Up to this day some folks know the band as \u201cCulebra dem.\u201d His singing is the essential style of Tanny & The Boys. Born in the Dominican Republic to St. Martin parents, Culebra is a veteran at the art of string music, playing the guitar and singing for over 40 years. He started out with a French Quarter-based string band that included old-timers like F\u00e9f\u00e9 Hyman, Lionel \u201cDjuki\u201d Romeo, Carl London, and Maurice Wescott.<\/p>\n Maxime Emeal Reed and Culebra are Tanny & The Boys\u2019 lead vocals. Maxime is a former member of Beach Island Stars and has been strumming guitar for over 50 years. Born in Anguilla in 1921, he came to St. Martin in 1938 as a teen-ager and that same year took up with a group headed by the late accordion player George Blyden. Blyden held \u201ccasa dances\u201d Over-The-Pond every Thursday and Saturday nights. When Blyden\u2019s son, Ludwick, left for Cura\u00e7ao, the guitar-playing job went to Maxime. This dudish musician has known the nation\u2019s party life from the time of \u201dtwo-sou dances\u201d to the \u201chouse concerts,\u201d to when in some parts a party was called a f\u00eate; a bottle of \u201djack iron\u201d rum and \u201ca little plate of bullfoot soup\u201d were \u201cpayment\u201d for musicians who played long, hard and sweet into the fore-day, while dancers \u201cwhined\u201d away to the festive music of the string band.<\/p>\n Edward \u201cEddie\u201d Emanuel Violenus has been playing music since the age of 16. His accordion is the soul of the Tanny & The Boys sound. Born in Aruba in 1939, Eddie was an original member of the now defunct Seteto Flores, a string band that played at house parties, hotels and formal functions in the early 1960s. Seteto Flores started out with musicians like Karl \u201cTall Boy\u201d Arndell, Jocelyn Arndell, Thomas Pemberton, Alberto Richardson, Arthur Mathew, and Raymond Violenus. An instrument maker, Eddie made the tambora, marimba and g\u00fciro now used by Tanny & The Boys. Eddie took part in the transition movement from purely string music to the \u201cbig band\u201d beginnings, when between 1962 and 1965 the Seteto Flores fused with the horn or \u201cblowing\u201d instruments of music pioneer John C. Larmonie\u2019s Philipsburg Community Brass Band to form Philipsburg Conjunto. Conjunto, also known as Larmonie and his Boys, appeared to have been formed expressly in response to the 1960s audience demand for a bigger and better \u201camplified\u201d party sound at the popular \u201cpublic dances\u201d held at St. John\u2019s Ranch, Vava Flanders\u2019 theater in Grand Case, and like venues throughout St. Martin.<\/p>\n George Bernard Violenus is the band\u2019s tambora-man. George, like his brother Eddie, was born to St. Martin parents in Aruba in the late 1930s. George, the \u201cobserver\u201d of the group, has been knocking and beating his drum since the age of 17. He sang with Cortijo out of Puerto Rico and Cuba\u2019s Chapotin and mantansera when those musical groups played in Aruba during the mid- to late-1950s. On St. Martin, in the early- to mid-1960s, George sang with Butcher & The Boys. Since the late 1970s George has been keeping the sweet rhythmic drumbeat for Tanny & The Boys.<\/p>\n James Roosevelt Samuel joined \u201cThe Boys\u201d in 1991, replacing the late Abraham Thomas on the marimba, the band\u2019s bass instrument (resembling and sounding much like the African hand-held kalimba). The St. Martin-born Roosevelt is the eldest son of another traditional string master and maker of instruments, James \u201cJim Tucker\u201d Robert Samuel. A young Roosevelt was the maracas player for the Jim Tucker group. Tucker\u2019s band of stringed instruments troubadours reigned at jam sessions known as \u201cbull fight dances\u201d and \u201cpublic dances\u201d held throughout the island and especially those hosted by Tounk\u00e9 Flanders in Experiment, and by Lilian Arndell and Louisa Stewart in Sucker Garden during the 1950s and into the 1960s. In 1959 Roosevelt played guitar pan (13-note) for the Jungle Sparrows when that steel band traveled to Cura\u00e7ao to perform. He also played the maracas and marimba for Seteto Flores.<\/p>\n Jocelyn Antonio Arndell, born in Cura\u00e7ao in 1941, has been playing music for 32 years, in his own words, \u201coff and on.\u201d He could be considered a junior member with \u201cThe Boys,\u201d but his scraping g\u00fciro instrument brings a haunting primordial sound to give a persistent stroke of mystery to this classic St. Martin f\u00eate music. Jocelyn, the band\u2019s historian and an original Seteto Flores member, also plays the accordion, guitar and marimba. His late mother Lilian Arndell, a village queen hostess of the \u201cbull fight\u201d and public dances, was an accomplished folk player of the guitar, mandolin, concertina, flute, and accordion.<\/p>\n In 1992, Tanny & The Boys released F\u00eate: The first recording of traditional St. Martin\u2019s festive music<\/em>(LP\/cassette, Mountain Dove Records). At the onset of the new century came the release of Classic Tanny & The Boys \u2013 String Band Music from St. Martin<\/em>, (A Mongoose Production, 2000), the band\u2019s first CD. Since this last recording, which contained new songs and a few old favorites, the band of seniors, with a seemingly inexhaustible disposition, continues its rigorous schedule all over St. Martin (and an occasional gig abroad), playing throughout the week, every week of the year in hotels, for private parties and cultural activities. The music and the accent that the musicians bring to the songs, whether sung in English or Spanish, bring alive a unique language that is felt as a total, joyful experience of mind, body and soul. \u201cThe Boys\u201d play merengue, calypso, tumba, bolero, waltz, pop, blues, polka, and mazurka with a grace, confidence, and macho mastery that is legendary to the culture of old time musicians, especially as expressed in the playing and posture of the classic panman. \u201cThe Boys\u201d \u201cdem\u201d appear to hold their instruments as an extension of time-earned genius, play their music and sing their songs with an eternal freshness, and convert a calypso tune into a merengue mix as only artists wised by the experience of doing art for the sweetness of life\u2019s sake could ever do.<\/p>\n In F\u00eate<\/em> and in Classic Tanny & The Boys<\/em> some of the band\u2019s songs are traditional, folksy, their origins on St. Martin obscure. Some of the music treats are cherished by \u201cThe Boys\u201d as their original creations. Some are adaptations of old-time calypsos and of tunes brought to St. Martin by music men like Theophile \u201cTon\u2019ton Neg\u201d Flanders and B\u00e8b\u00e8 Flanders returning from Santo Domingo in the 1920s with particularly meringue and the Cuban bolero and guaracha. On the cultural forge of S\u2019maatin they fused it with native music, song and dance forms (ponum, pump-drum, possibly the quimb\u00e9). These folk musicians would then draw on Creole (including Papiamento) rhythms and other Caribbean sounds from French- and English-speaking islands. In the cultural heartland villages such as Rambaud, St. Louis, Freetown and Colombier they \u201cstring out\u201d a unique sound at f\u00eates and during courting and Christmas serenades. The songs and music of \u201dThe Boys\u201d also has an antecedent heritage in string band players like the colorful Daniel \u201cN\u00e9gro\u201d Thewet (the late father of Kaisonian Mighty Cat), Wa\u2019kin Dollison and their \u201ctwo-sou dances\u201d of the 1940s.<\/p>\n The musicians of Tanny & The Boys have played all their lives, firstly for the people of St. Martin, at \u201chouse concerts,\u201d \u201ccasa dances,\u201d \u201cpublic dances,\u201d anniversaries, birthday parties, book parties, and formal receptions. The band has played in Anguilla, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Barthelemy, Tortola, St. Croix, Trinidad, The Netherlands, Bonaire, Cura\u00e7ao, Germany, in Aruba where it took part in a live TV tourism promotion to Japan in the late 1980s, and in Cuba at the 22nd<\/sup> annual Festival del Caribe, Fiesta del Fuego in 2002. \u201cThe Boys\u201d has entertained St. Martin\u2019s lieutenant governors, mayors, and a host of other dignitaries, personalities, and visitors to the island.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2002 by House of Nehesi Publishers\/Mountain Dove Records.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left”]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/authors\/tanbo2.jpg\")
The Men and Musical Tradition of Tanny & The Boys is the premier string band of St. Martin, and some would dare say of the North Eastern Caribbean. The musical group remains remarkably popular with the young and the old; and it has entertained personages from the Mighty Sparrow, kaiso king of the world, to Queen Beatrix of the Dutch kingdom. Tanny & The Boys was founded in the late 1970s and has the distinction of being the oldest existing band\u2014of uninterrupted music-making–on the island. The golden age musicians of this band play a festive music rooted in traditional St. Martin. The music is as sweetly infectious now to the mind, body, and soul of many as it was to revelers and partygoers for the first half the 20th century when the string band was a dominant mode of entertainment at parties. Those parties at times lasted \u201call night long\u201d and \u201cfor days\u201d on this Charismatically Caribbean island.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/powered_youtube.gif\")
<\/a><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n![\"Dope](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/video\/dopeup.jpg\")
![\"CasualitesFX3\"](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/video\/CasualitesFX3.jpg\")
![\"Roughneck\"](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/video\/roughneck.jpg\")
![\"ETERNO](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/video\/siembra.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Love](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/video\/clarareyes.jpg\")
![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.houseofnehesipublish.com\/images\/ads\/salteapertsr.jpg\")
<\/p>\n