No Kings Day is over, but Trump administration policies persist, so a group in Charlottesville is organizing another protest at 3 p.m. Saturday – a New Orleans-style funeral march on the downtown mall. The public is invited to join in mourning things the nation has lost and celebrating hope for the future.
A traditional New Orleans funeral march begins with solemn music, and organizers of Saturday’s event will do likewise with an original composition by renowned jazz musician John D’Earth – a piece he wrote at the age of 19.
“I never knew what to do with it," he recalls. "At that point it was called Elegy for Gun Violence, but I just renamed it Elegy. We’re going to play that, and there’s lots of room in it for vocalizing, so we’re hoping the singers will get involved and improvise.”
Joining the procession, the Charlottesville Women’s Choir, the Wonderground Singers, in Dearth’s words a ragtag bunch of really accomplished musicians, and anyone else who’d like to be part of this musical protest.
“It’s not a funeral, but you know so many things have been trashed that we hold dear," D'earth explains. "I think a lot of the resistance that we’re expressing is against the tone of things as much as anything -- the tone of cruelty.”
It’s hard to know what to do, he says, but music and community could raise spirits and create unity. That’s the way it happens when processions leave the cemetery in New Orleans.
“We want anybody who wants to march to join us. We want anybody who wants to play to join us. We want kazoos. We want cymbals," D'earth says. "Bring out the emotions! Bring together the community! It’s exactly what we need to be doing, because the thing that they want the most is for people to feel terrible and do nothing. I know that live music, live connection with other people is the answer to everything. It’s joy. It’s health.
The march will begin at the Ting Pavillion at 3 o’clock. In Charlottesville
