It took almost a year for the world to learn the name of Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old Black Colorado man who suffered a fatal heart attack last summer following a police encounter where officers put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with the powerful sedative ketamine.
But now that it has been learned, it won’t be easily forgotten.
The violence of his death stands in horrifying contrast to the peaceful way of life described by family: McClain was a vegetarian, a massage therapist, a self-taught musician. He was unarmed, and had committed no crime. A widely circulated picture shows him at an animal shelter, playing his violin for a cabinet full of kittens.
Galvanized by that powerful image and the sheer injustice of his death, musicians in many cities have organized memorials in the form of violin vigils, including one that took place July 2 at Jamaica Plain’s long-running monthly Black Lives Matter protest.
The nation’s first violin vigil took place late last month in McClain’s hometown of Aurora, Colo., with accomplished violinists and longtime buddies Ashanti Floyd and Lee England Jr. flying in from their respective homes of Atlanta and New York to help lead the demonstration.
McClain’s death hit the players especially hard. “We’re both Black violinists, not just violinists. We all grow up with similar stories in the orchestra world,” said Floyd, a six-time Grammy nominee. “It truly felt like it was me.”
Hearing McClain cry out in the body camera video of the police confrontation broke England’s heart. “He wasn’t even struggling ... and there was nobody there, nobody who actually heard him. And that’s what made me say, ‘Oh, they’re gonna hear you today.‘ I’m going down there to make enough noise for you to be heard, globally.”
Protests and music have always been a natural pair, and this summer’s ongoing chapter of the civil rights movement has had its share of musical moments. In New York City, “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” bandleader Jon Batiste invited musicians into the streets, calling on the tradition of Second Line parades in his native New Orleans.
Marchers in Detroit, the birthplace of so much politically electrified dance music, mounted speakers on a vehicle and chanted along with Bruno Furlan’s thumping “Line Five.”
Protesters around the country have been serenading police and elected officials with choruses of “You about to lose yo’ job!” — an irreverent song improvised by South Carolina woman Johnniqua Charles earlier this year when a security officer detained her outside a nightclub.
Her creation was given new life and viral megafame with a remix by iMarkkeyz and DJ Suede the Remix God.
Violins and other string instruments pack a comparably smaller punch when it comes to decibels. However, seeing a violin (or a cadre of violinists) at a protest still grabs the attention — first because it’s unexpected, and also because you need more than one player to make a big sound.
The Boston vigil, organized on Facebook, saw about 30 string players — masked, with 6 feet of space between them — gather on the lawn of Jamaica Plain’s First Baptist Church and spread out among the line of signs and flags on Centre Street.
Cars rolling by blasted their horns in support, punctuating the introspective, slow melodies of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “Amazing Grace.” “We might not be able to play the loudest, but we can bring a sort of serenity to the moment,” said Jeremy Harman, a cellist who participated in Boston’s vigil.
Musicians have “always played a role” in social movements, said St. Paul-based classical radio and podcast host Garrett McQueen in a phone interview. “Black musicians and musicians of color have always had no choice but to engage in these conversations, but it’s certainly taken hold in a unique way when it comes to the death of Elijah McClain.”
McQueen, who began his career as a bassoonist, has found that listeners often associate classical music and instruments with whiteness by default, and he strives to use his platform to further the cause of racial justice — whether that means airing work by Black composers or spreading the news about George Floyd’s death the night before it came to national attention.
“Elijah McClain may have not been a world-travelling soloist ... but he is someone who picked up this skill and applied it in a way that he loved. I think the aesthetic is often considered white, and that’s why unearthing the truth and shining a light on stories like [his] is important.”
So the situation begs a thorny question: Would there be the same outpouring of sympathy and anger from white people if McClain’s life story didn’t feel so comfortable and familiar? “The image of him playing his violin for kittens just happened to be a picture that made him gentle in the eyes of white folks, based on these structures that we’re fighting against — the idea of [the violin] being a white thing,” McQueen said. “Let’s expand that into the way we define what is good, who is a gentle person. Someone shouldn’t have to have a violin in their hand, in a room full of kittens, to be humanized.”
That doesn’t mean it’s less important or meaningful for musicians to be tuning up in memory of McClain. In fact, it’s very important, McQueen said. “[He] was one of us, and that violin still did not protect him. So I think the world needs to see that Black musicians, even just violinists specifically, are not going to take it. This also involves us, and we are going to be involved in the response.”
Or as Darrell R. Hamilton II, a pastor at First Baptist, put it at the July 2 rally: “When you know me, then you’re more inclined to fight for me.” Because McClain was a musician, it’s only natural that musicians and music lovers would feel connected with him.
“Now is the time to get to know,” Hamilton told the mostly white crowd, exhorting them to form connections with Black neighbors and communities. What would it look like if those white musicians and listeners did that work of getting to know?
If seeing a face among the fallen that could have been one of their students invests white musicians in fighting against racism, they can ask themselves what took this long and then get to work. “I hope that the white community is waking up to the fact that this is our problem,” Harman said.
For everyone watching at home, Floyd emphasized that the violin vigils are not entertainment but calls to action. “I think the more that we have people expressing their niches, the wider the audience can be,” Floyd said. “This violin vigil came about as a result of Elijah being a violinist, but I’m sure that there are other ways we can peacefully protest and include everyone, no matter what it is. Anything to get people out of the seats and into the streets.”
by Zoë Madonna
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