Musical responses to the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police have been many and varied. I’ve tried to keep a log of all of the expressions of anger, confusion, and sadness that I’ve seen, but they’ve come so fast that it’s nearly impossible to keep up. Below are a few highlights from the past couple of weeks, things that have either generated their own media coverage, have trended on social media, or have simply caught my eye.
Last Friday, Anthony McGill posted a video on Facebook of himself performing a mournful rendition of “America the Beautiful” before kneeling as if in prayer; he then issued a #taketwoknees challenge to other musicians to post their own videos and join the “struggle for justice and decency.” Scores of people have responded from all over the country.
In the days immediately after Floyd’s murder, gospel star Kirk Franklin posted a piano improvisation as tribute, and 12-year-old Keedron Bryant posted “I just wanna live,” an anthem his mother wrote for him. Absent any context, this is the one that got to me the most: hearing the voice, seeing the young man drove home that the protests and the outrage are first and foremost about wanting to stay alive, to simply live.
On June 2, the music industry participated in Blackout Tuesday, a movement that gained steam after an article in Variety. Jamila Thomas of Atlantic Records and Brianna Agyemang of the talent-development company Platoon came up with the idea of taking a day of silence to contemplate the industry’s role in perpetuating racism and how it can help end it. Most companies treated Blackout Tuesday as a social-media challenge, posting black squares on their feed, and the subsequent copycat posts from individuals led to a certain amount of confusion on the web. The idea of the music business taking a step back to examine itself is a good one though, given its history.
Carnegie Hall participated in Blackout Tuesday, and the following day they used their Carnegie Hall Live digital platform, started in response to the COVID-19 shutdown, to stream a 2017 recording of Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, conducted by Eugene Rogers and performed by the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra and the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club.
Inspired by Shirin Barghi’s #LastWords art project, Thompson sets the last words of seven Black men murdered by police: Kenneth Chamberlain, Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, John Crawford, and Eric Garner. In his raw and moving essay for WQXR, James Bennett, II writes:
Like the religious musical settings from which Seven Last Words takes its name, Joel Thompson’s piece forces the listener to sit in anguish, meditating on death and all the events leading up to it. It forces us to consider that a White Plains review of Chamberlain’s killing found the shooting “justifiable.” That the man who killed Trayvon was rewarded with acquittal, and later built a personal brand out of his violent antagonism. It reminds me that one of the officers who shot Diallou went on to shoot and kill a 22-year-old several months later, and have his “valour” rewarded with a promotion to the rank of sergeant in 2015. I’m reminded of a grand jury’s decision to not bring charges against the murderer of Michael Brown. Thompson’s music makes me think about the paltry two-year sentence given to Grant’s killer, and the decision to not bring charges against the officers responsible for Crawford’s death or the man who placed the fallacious 911 call that prompted the incident. It makes me think of the man who choked Eric Garner, specifically his transference to a desk job and the reported pay raise he received in 2016.
Listen to the piece; read the essay.
To the degree that there is a lighter side to things, this video, shared on Twitter by Zoe Madonna (@knitandlisten) earlier this weekend, is as close as we’ll get:
This musical lesson on the faulty assumptions about crime in Black neighborhoods began as a video on Tik Tok–where a mash-up of “This is America” has become the go-to musical expression of protest–by @rynnstar. Alex Engelberg then added the backing vocals. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head all day.
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