Monet Davis, a director, conductor and musician, is extra busy this time of year, as she moves from holiday concert to holiday concert.
There’s the Caribbean Chorale, the University of the Virgin Islands, and New Herrnhut Moravian Church performances. In between, there’s caroling at Sea View Nursing Facility, the Post Office, Tutu Park Mall, several churches and the airport – much of it with her V.I. National Guard Unit, the 73rd Army Band.
Davis was recently promoted to master sergeant, the first woman in the unit to obtain that rank. The 73rd is comprised of musicians.
“Our mission is music, but we still have to do the military stuff,” Davis said. “I’m pretty much in charge of training for my unit.”
She also conducts and – with three other members – composes and arranges music for the band.
Davis’ love affair with the G clef began when she was a small child.
“My mother had a piano. I guess when I was born it was there. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know music.”
She said when she was five her mother asked if she wanted to take piano lessons and Davis couldn’t wait to get started. She took lessons all through grade school, but when she reached the fifth grade she realized she couldn’t carry a piano down the street in a marching band, and she so much wanted to be in that band. She knew she needed to take up a wind instrument in addition to the piano.
“My father had a clarinet. He said, ‘Well, if you can put it together, you can have it,” Davis recalled.
Her school teacher gave her extra help outside of class, showing her the fingering on the clarinet.
“I already knew music, so half of his job was done. I was able to go into band in three weeks.”
At Wayne Aspinall (now Addelitta Cancryn) Junior High, she met a second teacher who influenced and inspired her: Leroy Trotman.
“He opened us up to a lot of different classical stuff,” Davis said.
At the same time, he was innovative, sometimes combining calypso rhythms with band instruments. Davis recalled a Carnival Parade performance that was pure island.
“I never imagined doing that with wind instruments,” she said.
Davis considers UVI professor Austin Venzen a mentor. The two often perform at each other’s concerts, and they maintain a close musical bond despite what Davis described as a “rough start” with a dispute over a grade he gave her when he was teaching at Charlotte Amalie High School and she was just a ninth grader.
Years later, when Davis dropped out of the music program at UVI, it was Venzen who convinced her to complete her degree, though it meant switching from piano to clarinet. Under his tutelage, she earned a bachelor of arts degree in music education.
Davis is proficient in piano, clarinet and the organ. She also sings – “if you want to call it singing. I’m no Lorna Freeman, but I can carry a tune.”
She has been the organist at New Herrnhut and an accompanist for UVI music students. She served many years as a full-time or guest accompanist for the Caribbean Chorale and has been its director for several years.
She enlisted in the National Guard in 1986 and was in charge of the Calypso Combo for the 73rd Army Band. When Jam Band legend Nick Friday died, Davis arranged one of his songs for the unit to play on Veteran’s Day as a tribute. It’s become a tradition to play some island music along with the usual military marches on Veteran’s Day.
“Our troops like to hear the calypso,” Davis said.
Last summer she spent the first week of July in the states, leading the 73rd in a July 4 parade down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., and conducting a concert in Lancaster, Pa., in front of an audience of 20,000.
“Right now I’m just studying and getting ready to finish my master’s” online at Walden University, Davis said. “Ultimately, I would like to teach on the university level.”
Davis has a daughter, Melodi, and a four-year-old grandson, Demel.
“He’s a handful,” she said, as Demel plunked away on the home piano. “He tries to play. I try to teach him the basics. He likes to sing too.”
Church, school, career, community, “It’s always been about music for me,” Davis said.
