Music Icon Given Final Seranade
Nathaniel “Tanny” Davis
Dozens press against each other on Friday to take a last look at the
coffi n holding the body of music icon Nathaniel “Tanny” Davis before
workmen close his tomb forever.
PHILIPSBURG—
Drummers and brass-players led the coffin of local music icon Hugo Nathaniel Davis ahead of about 200 mourners to his final resting place, where the body was greeted with the sounds of string-band music that had inspired his life and his legacy, on Friday.
Davis, better known as “Tanny,” founded the string music ensemble “Tanny and the Boys” more than six decades ago, entertaining the St. Maarten community with the melodious sounds of acoustic guitars, banjos and drums since the 1940s and setting the foundation for cultural cues on the island. He was sent off as he
lived – in the presence of friends, neighbours and admirers, with music leading the way. Hundreds attended Davis’ funeral service at the Philipsburg Methodist Church Friday, one 78-year-old’s sudden passing at his home in Fort Willem saddened the local community.
His friends and former band-mates called him a good man who had done a great deal for culture and music on the local scene.
The local cultural scene remembers him as a trendsetter, carving a legacy of string music into the history
of St. Maarten forever.
Culture
Commissioner Louie Laveist called him an icon with a discerning legend. “Tanny” and his former band-mates Carlson Velasquez and “Culebra,” were knighted into houses of Royal Dutch honour, joining
dozens of others to have received royal decorations from Her Majesty Queen Beatrix over the years.
A sombre procession of mourners marched down Front Street as the daylight of Friday dwindled into
night. A group of five young girls spelled Davis’ nickname in decorated carvings they carried with them
to the cemetery behind a banner with a caricature of Davis under the heading “SXM Musical Icon 1930-2008.”
Problems in getting the parade started threatened to mar the occasion, but mourners did not allow the late arrival of police and subsequent barring of Front Street to stop them from demonstrating en masse their appreciation for Tanny’s impact on their lives. Friends and family made up the numbers, with many wearing special T-shirts showing the same caricature with the words “We will always love you”
inscribed below the image.
A curiously dry-eyed ceremony suddenly led to a downpour of tears as workmen laid bricks to seal
Tanny’s coffin in a tomb at Mount Pleasant Methodist Cemetery. Mourners were almost inconsolable as
the flower-lined tomb was sealed and Davis was laid to his rest.
However, a retro-string band complete with a banjo, two guitars and a washbasin guitar, which had taken the monotony out of the droning of hymns, livened up the final chords of the ceremony, playing one of Tanny’s favourites – a song that accompanies every performance of the St. Maarten dance “The
Three-Step Polka.”
Mourners walk past the coff n containing the body of Nathaniel “Tanny” Davis in the
Philipsburg Methodist Church and pay their last respects to a great music icon on Friday.
(John Halley photo)
Mourners huddle together at the Methodist Cemetery in
Philipsburg and shed tears as they watch workmen seal the
tomb of the late Nathaniel “Tanny” Davis.
Five young girls lead the funeral procession for musician Hugo Nathaniel Davis on Friday,
with each holding a letter that spells out the nickname “Tanny” by which many people on
the island and in the region knew him best.
Taken from The Daily Herald, May 10th 2008
PHILIPSBURG—
Local music icon Nathaniel “Tanny” Davis passed away at his home on Thursday morning. He was 78
years old.
Davis was the founding father of St. Maarten’s leading string band “Tanny and the Boys,” a group that many have labelled as the island’s foremost cultural ambassadors. Tanny last played with the group, which has changed members several times since the 1950s, at a special string music tribute concert at Boo Boo Jam in Orient Bay last month.
Born in the late 1940s when Davis was still a teenager, “Tanny and the Boys” has gained regional and international acclaim in about 60 years for its melodious and relaxed string music played using a mixture of
acoustic guitars and accordions.
The original members were honoured with royal decorations from Her Majesty Queen Beatrix last year for their numerous contributions to culture on the island.
Davis was originally from Anguilla, but spent most of his life in St. Maarten, working and playing music.
He had been involved in music since he was nine years old, mastering several instruments, including the guitar, in his teens.
He formed the soon-to-be-acclaimed group at 17 and it would play music for visitors as the island’s travel
recognition began to grow. Carlson Velasquez (70) was a member of Tanny and the Boys before the group
even had a name.
Back in the 1960s, they called themselves “Sexteto Flores (Six Flowers)” when they played 10-guilder-per-night gigs at hotels on the island.
“We used to have to play a lot of nights for everybody to have 10 guilders for himself,”
As he remembered his old friend on Friday, Velasquez said Tanny had been very much an amicable
person, a good bandmate and a better friend.
However, Velasquez and Davis did not truly become friends until after the former left the band in the1970s. In those days, Velasquez was on Tanny’s water delivery route when water was doled out in rations, and they would play together during each of Tanny’s visits. “I got more acquainted with him after the band
business.
He used to deliver water [to my home],” Velasquez reminisced. “Tanny was a good man.”
Taken from The Daily herald, May 3rd 2008