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Social justice music project debuted at U-M back in national spotlight amid protests

Video Still of "Seven Words of the Unarmed" performance by U-M Men's Glee Club. (Chris McElroy | University of Michigan)

ANN ARBOR – In 2015, the Men’s Glee Club at the University of Michigan debuted a powerful multimovement work titled “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” by Atlanta-based composer Joel Thompson.

In the chilling piece, the singers, accompanied by an orchestra, sing the last words of seven black men killed by police or authority figures: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Kenneth Chamberlain, Amadou Diallo and John Crawford.

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Although the project is five years old, many are revisiting and discovering the work following the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

“It is unreal to me that we worked on this project so long ago, yet somehow resonates even more now than it did then,” Eugene Rogers, who originally commissioned the work as former director of the Men’s Glee Club said in a statement. “People have been sharing it again and reaching out -- it has been really overwhelming.”

Rogers is currently the director of choral activities at the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

“Right now, people are looking for comfort, and they’re also looking for constructive, concrete ways to process these events and move forward," he said in a statement. "We have created in-depth, thoughtful resources for those who want to use this artistic work to begin these critical conversations in our classrooms, workplaces, places of worship and homes.”

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Along with premiering “Seven Last Words,” Rogers produced an award-winning film “Love, Life & Loss” with Michigan Media and has spent several years creating educational resources with scholars from other disciplines that can be found at sevenlastwords.org.

Composer Joel Thompson. (Laura Emiko Soltis)

Thompson was workshopping his composition in 2015 when he met Rogers. It was inspired by Iranian-American artist Shirin Barghi’s #lastwords project. He chose the dying words of seven men that he felt most aligned with the classical structure of Joseph Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross.”

These are the words featured in the song’s seven movements:

  • “Why do you have your guns out?” – Kenneth Chamberlain, 66
  • ″What are you following me for?" – Trayvon Martin, 16
  • “Mom, I’m going to college.” – Amadou Diallo, 23
  • “I don’t have a gun. Stop shooting.” – Michael Brown, 18
  • “You shot me! You shot me!” – Oscar Grant, 22
  • “It’s not real.” – John Crawford, 22
  • “I can’t breathe.” – Eric Garner, 43

“'Seven Last Words of the Unarmed is essentially a diary entry of the pain I was experiencing,” Thompson, who is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in composition at Yale University, said in a statement. “I’m literally where I’m at today because Eugene took a chance on me and bravely chose to program it and teach with it despite the risks involved.”

"Releasing the piece into the world has created a space where people have been able to open their hearts up, and that part of this journey has been fulfilling."


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