There is the echo of a snare drum rattling the speakers of someone in America that looks exactly like me. By looking like me, I mean a young Black man. There is a gas station somewhere in America that this someone will visit for fuel. Perhaps this someone has a friend or two with him. Perhaps the snare drum continues to roll as the vehicle is placed into park. Perhaps they all want some sort of snack to whet their appetites. Perhaps, here, the night hides light from us all.
As the light is hidden from us all, darkness reigns supreme.
There is a white man in this gas station as well. This white man may decide that this is neither the time nor the place for anyone’s trunk to rattle at sky-high decibels. This white man may decide that those black men are a threat to him, his sanity, his society. His society. He may decide to approach the black man. He may decide to tell him to turn it down. He may decide that he saw a gun in the car. He may murder a black man named Jordan Davis who died before he could live.
The sound of music fades on cue with the last pattern of breath.
People that look like me are being silenced, our voices deafened. The reasons are exponential, the validation unjustifiable. But the moment I found out that a young black man in Florida, age a mere year younger than myself, is no longer breathing because someone wanted him and his friends to turn the music down and fired upon a car of unarmed people… I felt like crumbling to pieces where I sat.
Let me not forget to say “allegedly” … If I didn’t, there would be hell to pay for obvious reasons.
As I sifted through my initial shock, anger and disgust, I recall the simplicity of what triggered me: the music. The music running deep in the bloodlines of black youth has amassed millions with a power both subliminal and in the limelight. And on this night in Florida, as Trayvon Martin finishes his tea and Skittles in a heaven we have yet to discover, the music was a catalyst to someone dying.
It began with a hoodie. It continued with voices from a speaker. What do these things have in common? Fear. Michael Dunn shot Jordan Davis down out of fear for his life, and this began with the music. In fact, no it did not. Whatever erupted from Davis’ car merely ignited the paranoia in Michael Dunn’s head that a young black man is threatening. Threatening enough to where something needed to be done, whether verbally or forcefully.
The artists of racism have come and gone, but the soundtrack never changes.
I am a musician. The possibility that I may one day ride to a gas station with my father in the passenger seat and my learner’s permit in the glove compartment with the radio’s blare filling every crevice with sound and die is the paradox of it all. My black face peering out the window, my hand on the steering wheel as my dad buys me potato chips, and someone who does not look like me deciding this radio and I challenges everything he stands for. We are the menace he was warned about working in tandem polluting the world. Shots piercing the side of the burgundy car. My face across an AP newswire. As a society, murders over merchandise are nothing new under the sun. But this is not a shoe or a wallet or a coat or a cellular at hand.
This is music we are talking about.
Florida has given clearance to a war zone. Michael Dunn wanted the signal to die. But for Davis’ sake, and the sake of everyone else, I shall echo the sentiment that so many others have pushed forth since the news broke through and broke more hearts. This transcends genre, this transcends agenda, and believe it or not, it transcends race. Be that as it may, do not forget race when it is the subject at hand. So many others already do that and will continue to their hearts’ content. I cannot do that here.
Turn the music up.
This is an SOS Turn the speakers until the frequencies scream the names of the dead. Let it play, and play with your emotions. Let the hateful beings of the world resign in their bitterness as you rejoice at the sound of whatever it is that you enjoy. In the words of Kendrick Lamar: “Ride to it, ride to it, ‘cause you never know… when a bullet might hit… and you die to it.”
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