Night moves: Former Marine D’Manti lights up charts - Entertainment, Music - Navy Times

Night moves: Former Marine D’Manti lights up charts

Former Marine intelligence specialist and Marine Band sax player Sgt. Danielle Diamond is better known as D’Manti these days as her hit single “Tonight” rises up the dance charts.

Her sexed-up debut track, produced in Puerto Rico by Latin Grammy-winner Luny Tunes, recently claimed the No. 15 slot on Billboard’s Club Play charts. With eyes on a South American tour, she says she’s finishing up a Spanglish remix of the song.

Diamond, who served in the Corps from 1995-99 with tours in South Korea and Okinawa, says she wrote the track while driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas last year.

“I was writing a love song, and in that four-hour drive, it just came together,” she says. “We just took those words and turned them into dance music because my thing is I just want people to have a good time. It was like magic. Everything came together.”

Diamond and her husband, a former soldier she met salsa-dancing at the military’s Hale Koa resort in Honolulu, have been operating an eco-tourism business in Hawaii dubbed Discover Hawaii Tours for the past 16 years.

These days, however, Diamond is based in L.A., devoted full-time to her singing and dancing career.

“I’m dying to do a USO tour,” she says. “Being a veteran and thinking about everyone out there right now putting their lives on the line, I’d just like to provide them with an hour of fun and take them away from everything they’re dealing with. That would make me happy and hopefully make them happy.”