After Wildfire Ash Stole Her Voice, This Pasadena Singer Recovered—Just in Time for Christmas

For nearly two months at the start of this year, Monet Bagneris could not speak. The singer’s throat had gone into shock, a physiological response to the toxic ash that blanketed the area after the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena. She communicated with a dry-erase board, her voice reduced to silence.

Eleven months later, Bagneris has released “Can’t Wait for Santa,” a holiday single that she describes as an expression of gratitude—for recovery, for resilience, and for the simple gift of being able to sing again.

“I’m so grateful to God that I have my voice again,” Bagneris said in an interview. “I wanted to create a song that could capture the joy of the holiday season, a song that can bring generations together, bring communities together.”

For Bagneris, her exposure to Eaton’s ash proved especially cruel: it targeted the instrument on which her career and identity depend: her voice.

“Because the ash from the fires, my body, my throat went into shock.” She paused. “It was really hard for me.”

Voice loss from wildfire ash inhalation has been documented in medical literature. A 2017 study in the Journal of Allergy & Therapy noted that voice loss can occur in inhalation-related vocal cord dysfunction. But it’s rare.

For a professional vocalist—someone whose livelihood and sense of self are intertwined around the ability to vocalize—such a condition carries stakes beyond the physical.

“I am at my core, an encourager. My mission is to be a source of hope for people who may feel like it’s a hopeless situation — to remind them that, hey, they’re seen, they’re heard, and they are valuable,” she said.

When the fires silenced her, that mission fell silent too.

So when her voice returned and she could sing, Bagneris felt a gratitude that needed to be expressed in joyful song. And so she wrote “Can’t Wait For Santa.”

The single, released December 9 on Apple Music, Spotify, and other streaming platforms, represents a return to form.

Bagneris wrote the song herself and served as executive producer through her company, Brand New Day Enterprises LLC. The track features a full band: Brendan Bennett on bass and synthesizer, Jeremy Jenkins on drums, Justin Klunk on saxophone, Cedric Lily on keyboards, and Cody Breyer on guitar, with Bagneris on piano and vocals.

The recording was engineered by Jeremy Underwood, who previously served as chief engineer at Firehouse Recording Studios in Pasadena, along with Alex Schindler and Miles Madigan. Mixing and mastering were handled by Kofi Owusu-Ofori, a Los Angeles-based engineer and producer.

Bagneris’s roots in Pasadena run deep. Her mother, Michele Bagneris, has served as the city’s attorney since 1997.

Monet has performed at countless civic events throughout the city, including the Mayor’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony, where she once experienced what she calls a “magical moment.”

“The moment I said, ‘let it snow,’ there was snow that started falling right outside Pasadena City Hall,” she recalled of her performance of “Let It Snow.”

Beyond her solo work, Bagneris manages A Taste of Honey, the Grammy Award-winning group best known for winning Best New Artist at the 1979 Grammy Awards. The group is set to release a new single in April, and Bagneris continues recording her own material.

Reflecting on the arc of her year—from February silence to December song—Bagneris struggled to contain her emotion.

“I think the chills are coming because thinking back to February when I couldn’t talk … to know now that at the end of the year I would be releasing a single that has caught on … I am so grateful,” she said.