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A Nashville musician says his career is being ruined by woke critics who labeled him a racist — for speaking out against arson and rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
Daniel Elder, 34, who debuted his commercial album “The Heart’s Reflection” in 2011, when he won the Abbey Road Studios Anthem Competition, has been blackballed by his publisher and choral directors have silenced his music, Reason reported.
“My artistic wellspring is capped,” Elder told the outlet. “I think it will come back, but things have remained in quite a rough place after all this happened.”
The composer’s downfall came after he posted a short statement online that went viral during the Floyd protests last summer.
“Enjoy burning it all down, you well-intentioned, blind people. I’m done,” Elder wrote on Instagram after a group of protesters marched in Nashville on May 30, 2020, according to Reason.
Some activists who joined the protest smashed windows, threw rocks at police cars and eventually set the city’s historic courthouse ablaze, according to the report.
The mayhem unnerved Elder, who had always considered himself on center-left, though not particularly political or outspoken. He did support liberal causes, including police reform, and opposes racism.
Elder, who like other city residents was under curfew on that fateful night, found himself increasingly alarmed by the large number of social media posts that appeared to justify radicalism, Reason reported.
“I saw a mob mentality around my own friends, and I worried that was what was happening on the outside, too,” he told the outlet.
The farewell message he posted on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook assailed those responsible – though he did not malign their cause or ethnicity and did not attack the Black Lives Matter movement or criminal justice reform.
He actually suggested their motives were good but that their self-defeating tactics made them oblivious.
But the next day, Elder faced a torrent of vitriol by critics who accused him of being a racist and a “white supremacist piece of garbage,” Reason reported.
Some people confessed to having enjoyed his music but vowed they could never listen to it again.
“I’ve relatively recently become aware of your work and have enjoyed your compositions for their sensitivity and artistry,” one former fan wrote.
“However, after learning of your insensitive comments on social media, however perceived as misunderstood, I’ve decided to unsubscribe from your [YouTube] channel and will no longer recommend your compositions to colleagues,” the person added.
Another person expressed “hope that you find a way to lose that hate in your heart.”
And yet another critic wrote: “Do some research and maybe some inner reflection and maybe figure out where your racist tendencies are coming from. You are canceled. Black lives matter!”
GIA Publications, the major publisher of religious content, soon took note of the controversy. Its president, Alec Harris, and media editor Susan LaBarr asked Elder to post an apology GIA had written.
“Over the weekend I made a post on my social media accounts that was insensitive and wrongly-worded. I deeply apologize for the anger, offense, and harm that this post caused. While this offense was not intended, it is what was created. For this I am truly sorry,” read the apology, Reason reported.
“There is no justification that I can offer for my post. So, rather than try to offer an excuse for what was done, I offer a promise for what I will do going forward. I commit to making amends and to dialogue. I commit to continue educating myself about privilege and bias. I commit to continue seeking an understanding of the experience of others, especially the Black community. I know that working for justice requires that we each first act justly. My work begins now,” it said.
But Elder declined to issue the statement, saying, “I chose to be that guy who didn’t issue the apology. Things went from there and it wasn’t good.”
So GIA took matters into its own hands.
“The views expressed in composer Daniel Elder’s incendiary social media post on Sunday evening do not reflect the values of GIA or our employees,” it wrote in a statement.
“GIA opposes racism in all its forms and is committed to do what Michelle Obama called ‘the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out,’” GIA wrote, adding that the company would no longer publish Elder.
Neither Harris nor LaBarr responded to a request for comment from Reason about which aspect of Elder’s anti-arson stance they oppose.
Elder suffered devastating consequences after losing the support of a publisher and his professional network. Local choral directors also have refused to do business with him amid the controversy.
“It’s a bad look for them,” Elder told Reason. “It’s really quite extreme, the effect this has had.”
The sidelined artist’s mental well-being also has taken a hit after he lost many friends, colleagues and fans.
Elder, who has seen a therapist and a psychiatrist, also said he has needed to be “talked off the ledge” several times as he struggled to compose new music since the episode.
But despite the downfall, Elder said the experience has affected him positively in one way – by making him less ideologically narrow-minded.
“Because I was exiled, I started listening to voices on the right and the center, especially these classical liberals who have been exiled from the leftist movement,” he told Reason.
“The strange silver lining is this shook me out of my prejudices a little bit,” he added.
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