Edward “Eddie” Emanuel Violenus (center), performing on accordion at the Boardwalk Mas, a festival of St. Maarten Tourist Bureau, 2010, AC Wathey Square. © House of Nehesi Publishers.
By Lasana M. Sekou
SUCKER GARDEN--Edward “Eddie” Emanuel Violenus began playing music at age 16 and continued well into his 80s, up until shortly before his passing in February 2026. His accordion became the soul of the legendary Tanny & The Boys sound.
Born in Aruba in 1939 to St. Martin parents, Eddie returned to St. Martin, where he was an original member of Seteto Flores, a string band that performed at house parties, hotels, and formal functions in the early 1960s.
Seteto Flores started out with musicians like Karl “Tall Boy” Arndell, Jocelyn Arndell, Thomas Pemberton, Alberto Richardson, Arthur Mathew, and Raymond Violenus.
An instrument-maker, Eddie made the classic tambora, marimba, and güiro for Tanny & the Boys over the years. Eddie took part in the transition movement from purely string music to the “big band” beginnings, when between 1962 and 1965 the Seteto Flores fused with the horn or “blowing” instruments of music pioneer John C. Larmonie’s Philipsburg Community Brass Band to form Philipsburg Conjunto.
Conjunto, also known as Larmonie & His Boys, appeared to have been formed expressly in response to the 1960s audience demand for a bigger and better “amplified” party sound at the popular “public dances” held at St. John’s Ranch, Vava Flanders’ theater in Grand Case, and like venues throughout St. Martin.
As band sizes and dance music styles on the island evolved, Tanny & the Boys, founded in the late 1970s, endured, not only in its traditional form, but also in a resurgence of popularity in St. Martin and in performances abroad from the late 1980s through the first decade of the new century.
Eddie’s accordion playing, along with instruments he crafted - including the banjo of band leader Nathaniel “Tanny” Davis and the marimba - are preserved on Fête: The First Recording of Traditional St. Martin’s Festive Music (1992, LP, cassette). The landmark recording was arranged by Urmain “Youmay” Dormoy and produced by House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP).
As with Fête, Eddie’s accordion playing is also elemental, along with the instruments and voices of his fellow iconic band members, on Classic Tanny & The Boys – String Band Music from St. Martin (2000), the group’s first CD release, produced by Mongoose Production.
Rene Violenus recalled last week in a Facebook comment how: “As a young boy” he watched his great-uncle’s “genius and love for his craft, manifest in so many different forms…goat would get butchered... next thing you know, skin hanging out to cure for the making of a drum (tambora for George)... an old milk tin split with a cold chisel, flattened, holes punched on it with a nail and hammer, ’cause he making a ‘güiro ’ (for Jocelyn)...
“I remember him cutting the metal tins and setting them on a marimba vaguely... [I] remember so many of the older heads coming and going in the yard in Sucker Garden,” Eddie’s home district.
In a separate Facebook comment, retired businessman Leo Friday noted that the musician
“also played baseball with the Caterpillars” and was “a great catcher.”
Eddie Violenus also crossed cultural art genres, appearing with band members in paintings by the island’s leading artists such as Ruby Bute, Cynric Griffith, and Ras Mosera. The band and its instruments have been mentioned in poetry.
As recently as 2021, Bute’s pastel portrait of the Tanny & The Boys accordionist was featured on the cover of the Caribbean Music edition of “Interviewing the Caribbean” (Vol. 7, No. 1)—the peer-reviewed journal published in Jamaica by The University of The West Indies Press.
Edward “Eddie” Emanuel Violenus is remembered, alongside his fellows, for musical excellence and an enduring legacy in the preservation of St. Martin’s traditional festive and string band music. Well played, Eddie.
https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/remembering-eddie-violenus-st-martin-legendary-musician-and-instrument-maker
