The music man

The little girl struggles to hold the heavy clarinet in her hands.

Amira Chambers, all of 5 years old, sits inside the cold air of the Metro Music store, with her winter coat still on, and blows out one unsteady note after another as she learns her new instrument. 

Her teacher, wearing a knit hat and winter coat, points to a sheet of music and instructs her note by note. "F," he says. She blows F. "F again," he says. She does F again. "Now an open G. OK, another one. Again. Again. Now play F. Good! Good! Good!" he exclaims.

Sometimes her notes slip a little into sharps or flats, but each time they do, Mark Lamonte, the store's 64-year-old owner, gently prods her back on track, without a trace of impatience in his voice, always with the same gentle, steady tone of a good teacher. He charges only $5 for a half-hour lesson in any instrument you want to play. He knows how to play them all.

George Cunningham, her grandpa, who's winter-bundled like the others, sits and watches as he does every Saturday with two other little children, one a grandchild and one his own, who fidget as they wait for their own lessons. He marvels at the teacher's tenderness. "The music man here, the way that he takes time with the kids, the way that he reaches them — not everybody's got that kind of patience with kids," the 66-year-old minister says.

Children, the reverend thinks, should learn to play a musical instrument. Doesn't matter which one. Not only does it give them something constructive to do, not only is it a skill that will benefit them in other ways, but there's just something that's good for the soul about creating music out of nothing. That's why they're sitting here now, in a cold, unlit room, with this likable, slightly eccentric teacher.

"Everybody love music," Cunningham says, as the clarinet behind him honks out one note at a time. "Show me somebody that don't love music. I don't know nobody that don't."

You can see the tall, brick Metro Music building from the freeway that runs below it. Faded lettering up high announces it with a name that says not only are instruments sold here, but that the ability to make your own music is taught here.

Lamonte's father, Fred, started the store back in 1952. He'd been a steel guitarist in a touring Hawaiian band, and for years had his own music store called the Aloha National Conservatory of Music on 14th Street near Grand River Avenue, where he taught how to play what was then still a popular genre. But he and his business partner had a falling out, so Fred purchased a plot of west side land that now overlooks the sunken Southfield Freeway near Joy Road and had the Metro Music store custom built.

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