The Violin Conspiracy

“He hadn’t played the simple melody for so long but somehow it always lay there, just beyond the furthest reaches of his hearing, the song he played so often for Grandma Nora, and he played it for her now, the unpretentious tune pouring down and echoing and repeating. Lovely was the word ‘Rhosymedre’ translated, and he closed his eyes and for a moment just let its sweetness wash him clean.”

This particular song becomes a recurring motif throughout the novel and serves as one of the few connections Ray has to his grandmother. The word “sweetness,” in particular, echoes his grandmother’s wishes for him at the start of his career. This moment highlights the fact that his connection to her is a constant undercurrent under everything he does, even as he learns more complex techniques and moves up in the classical music industry.

“So here’s what you do if you’re a Black guy trying to make it work in an unfamiliar world: You just put your head down and do the work. You do twice as much work as the white guy sitting next to you, and you do it twice as often, and you get half as far. But you do it.”

In this moment, Slocumb shifts to second person to break the fourth wall and begin speaking to the reader. This quote becomes a thesis statement for the entire novel, encompassing one of the key messages that the author is trying to communicate through his work. All of Ray’s struggles against systemic racism and expectation of certain people come from this core truth about his place in the world and the perseverance he exhibits in order to overcome these obstacles.

“In that moment Ray saw something both familiar and foreign: he’d seen that same expression dozens of times, from dozens of people. The men on the corner on his way to work. The cashier at the 7-Eleven. The police officer riding by on patrol. Mark Jennings in orchestra class. He knew that expression.”

The phrase “familiar and foreign” is designed to catch the reader’s attention with its alliterative juxtaposition and highlights a seemingly conflicting truth about the protagonist’s experience with the world around him. These expressions are foreign because they seem out of place with how the world should be but familiar because Ray has been exposed to them his entire life. This moment gives clarity and context to the relationship that Ray has with the world and with himself.

“Everything written by James Baldwin and Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and all the other writers that he’d read in school was true: racism was real, and it was about him.”

Throughout the novel, the author takes opportunities to highlight other Black writers and musicians. This gives the novel’s themes real-world context, as well as a feeling of community and solidarity. This moment of reflection shows that the problems that Ray faces are real and presents generations of Black people who have experienced similar obstacles to become prominent voices.

“When you begin to hate them just because they hate you, you turn into them. And then they win.”

This lesson from Ray’s grandmother highlights The Value of Respect when dealing with aggressive racism and hatred from majority identities. Here, the novel expresses the idea articulated by feminist activist Audre Lorde in her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” There are several instances in the novel in which Ray could turn to this hatred, but instead he manages to overcome his anger and fear by being the man his grandmother encouraged him to be.

“He left them arguing, set the case on the kitchen table. It didn’t matter what they decided: for this moment, the violin lay in front of him, connecting him to his grandmother and to his past and to a musical heritage he barely understood.”

Throughout the novel, all of the characters take a range of different perspectives toward the violin. To Ray, it represents ancestry, heritage, and family—what a family is meant to be, in his eyes, rather than the one in which he was raised. This connection to his heritage becomes a driving force throughout the story and a source of many of the external conflicts he faces along the way.

“It was assuredly Ray’s imagination, but holding the violin in his trembling left hand and his right hand sweaty on the bow, as he looked out at the sea of faces, another figure grinned back at him: a small man, shorter than his mother, just behind Aunt Joyce, very thin, with hunched shoulders and deep-set almond-shaped eyes.”

Seeing ghosts becomes a recurring motif through Ray’s journey. This is his first experience of it; later, he sees his grandmother and Janice in ghostly images. It’s never specified whether this is a real ghostly encounter or an internal projection; in each instance, however, Ray finds comfort and encouragement in people he has lost, which brings him the strength to move forward in challenging circumstances.

“Appalachian State passed him by. So did Duke. UNC looked at him vacantly and then headed toward a blond girl who’d sat a few seats behind him. It was as if he were a human-shaped block of wood or a potted plant: something to be bypassed on their way to someone else.”

In this instance, Ray’s experience with racism is more innocuous than the violent instances that he experiences elsewhere. Slocumb’s use of synecdoche to describe the people from “Appalachian State,” “Duke,” and “UNC” highlights the institutionalized nature of the racism that Ray faces in this moment. This passage also shows that Ray needs to overcome not only the prejudice against Black people in America but also the international expectation of what the classical music world is supposed to look like.

“The next few weeks passed in a blur, taking turns at her bedside, and when he couldn’t be with her he sat in the hallway, staring blankly at his textbook: A History of Western Music. He played for her whenever he could—The Lark Ascending and de Falla’s Spanish Dance—always finishing with ‘Rhosymedre.’”

This moment reiterates the importance of “Rhosymedre” in Ray’s life, as well as highlighting the patchwork compositional quality of Ray’s musical upbringing. Here, he features a range of different regions and influences that make up his own unique musical style and uses them to create a connection with his grandmother in her time of need.

“Aunt Rochelle never tried to make him leave the room: that time a few years ago in the music shop, when the racist clerk had yelled at him, had formed a special bond between them. Ever since then, she’d go out of her way to ask him about music, or get him to play for the family.”

Ray’s family is mostly painted in a negative light, apart from his grandmother. His Aunt Rochelle serves as an intergenerational intermediary between Ray, his mother, her siblings, and his grandmother, who was an important figure to them both. This moment highlights the intergenerational scope of the novel and illustrates solidarity in adversity.

“Everybody wanted to see the new kid with his shiny Strad. He wondered how many of them wanted to watch him make an idiot of himself on the stage: he knew he was just a curiosity, something to tell their friends about later.”

Ray finds himself in a unique position as someone with one of the world’s best instruments yet without the other privileges with which others in his industry have grown up. His use of the music slang “Strad” reflects, however, his entrance into the classical music world. This moment acknowledges that, while his situation is challenging, it also affords him a unique opportunity through its newsworthiness and fairy tale quality. By beginning with low expectations from his audience, Ray is able to surpass them and create a new narrative.

“She was stiff in his embrace, but eventually her arms wrapped around him for a moment. It was more than usual: it was enough. It would have to be.”

This moment presents a singularity in the otherwise unaffectionate dynamic between Ray and his mother, who is usually presented as shallow, Machiavellian, and emotionally detached. This moment, however, illustrates both that Ray still craves her love and approval in spite of her treatment of him and evokes pathos momentarily for Ray’s mother as well as Ray.

“Coaching young players and getting paid for it would be a new experience for him, and he looked forward to sharing what he could, especially with students who didn’t have the advantages—the nice instruments, the private coaching, the effortless travel to work with a big-name teacher—that wealthy students often possessed.”

Throughout the novel, Ray transcends from being an underprivileged student with limited resources to a figure of hope for other people of color, particularly musicians. This moment marks a turning point in his narrative trajectory, in which he begins to discover another purpose to shaping his career. Through his experiences, he’s able to offer opportunities to underprivileged students that they would not otherwise have had, which, by extension, contributes to diversifying the classical music landscape as a whole. This is both a diegetic part of the narrative and a function of the novel that contributes to presenting a diverse view of classical music to readers.

“He would not stoop to their level. They hated him; they hated what he stood for. They were not ashamed by their past; they reveled in it. But he would not hate them. He would not become them. He would be tall and respectful and he would command them.”

This moment echoes Ray’s earlier conversation with his grandmother about hatred and shows the way he’s absorbed and incorporated her teachings into his way of living. Although Ray feels threatened, he turns to The Value of Respect out of the necessity for a safer environment for himself. This reliance on respect is a constant underlying thread throughout the novel.

“Eventually they settled on Ray’s suggestion of a pale pink to match the rose that he now handed to an audience member each night before the performance. Kristoff thought the color was simply to match the rose. In truth, Ray’s choice of color was a nod to Grandma Nora’s housecoat, a private moment that only he appreciated: it was as if he were performing with her every night.”

This moment highlights the different approaches characters in the novel take to music, performance, and the violin itself. For Ray, music is always a way of connecting with his grandmother and his familial heritage, even to the extent of crafting his onstage persona. Ray and Kristoff come to an agreement, despite their opposing perspectives, with each finding something to value in the approach, reflecting the theme of Art Versus Commerce.

“College had been a single-minded pursuit of music, and although he’d gone out a few times with a few girls, he’d always been more focused on playing than being in a relationship. It didn’t help, either, that all the women at school had been white and that they had somehow seemed off-bounds to him.”

Ray’s determination is one of his most distinctive characteristics, as is his understanding of the systemic racism that has surrounded him all his life. Slocumb highlights the impact that racism has on interpersonal relationships, something that foreshadows Ray’s vulnerability to the deception by Nicole, who might have previously felt “off bounds.”

“In fact, in all major American orchestras, only 1.8 percent of musicians are Black. The number jumps to about twelve percent if you include all people of color. Ray’s story is unique only because he’s more talented, and more single-minded, than many others—and he found a teacher who nourished and supported him.”

At several points throughout the novel, the author uses the narrative as a way to communicate real-world statistics and issues that people of color are facing. Even though this is a work of fiction, the numbers explored through this documentary are real; by creating this sense of verisimilitude within the novel, the author is able to draw the reader’s attention to the struggles Black musicians like himself are facing today.

“He tried to tell himself that it was just a precision instrument, chunks of wood carved and glued together. And yet sometimes—no, often—as he was playing, it felt like it wasn’t just him playing: it was the instrument itself singing with joy and, yes, with gratitude—grateful to him, grateful to the world.”

Ray becomes increasingly convinced that his violin is itself a piece of art that transcends the quality of object (a sentiment echoed in the following quotation, too). Here, he is projecting his own connection with his music onto an inanimate object, seeing his own gratitude for his talent and surroundings reflected back at him. By personifying his violin, Slocumb suggests that Ray creates a sense of community and belonging with his deceased family members and heritage.

“Ray, several glasses of wine in, asserted that it was none of those physical characteristics—that Antonio Stradivari had, magically, somehow managed to imbue his instruments with a life of their own, with soul. They could laugh at him all they wanted, but he was convinced of this—his violin was vastly more than the sum of its parts.”

This is another instance in which Slocumb personifies Ray’s violin, believing it to have a spirit and even agency. While the novel does introduce some subtle speculative aspects, the significance of this to Ray’s character development is that he experiences, with his violin, his own soul coming alive when he interacts with it. His perceptions are not truly of a life external to his own, but an awareness of his own coming of age that he equates to the journey he has taken with the violin.

“Here was the thing that Ray knew about himself: he was hardwired not to give up. The violin was gone, and its loss paralyzed him, but paradoxically, its loss also spurred him to control the two areas of his life he could control: practicing his ass off and raising money for the ransom.”

Even as the violin is no longer in Ray’s possession, its presence continues to inspire him and help him grow. In this way, he takes his relationship with his violin into himself, using its connection to gather strength and move forward. This illustrates the way his successes and accomplishments come not from an expensive instrument, but from himself and the way he approaches his music. The expression “practicing his ass off” is an example of Slocumb using Ray’s colloquial intonation in the third-person narration, otherwise known as free indirect discourse.

“The crush of people scared him for a moment, but then he realized that this was his tribe, people whose lives centered around music—who would understand like no one else what losing his violin meant to him.”

Part of Ray’s character development involves going from a family who doesn’t understand him to a community who accepts him and believes in him. Although there are rivalries and prejudices in the classical music world, those rivalries are built on a passion for the very thing that brought them all together. In this moment, Ray becomes part of a different kind of family for the first time.

“Ray’s résumé: Pretending his bed’s headboard was the violin’s fingerboard. Taking a beat-up old fiddle for repairs in an Atlanta suburban mall, where a racist clerk told him to pull up his pants. Begging for rides to a jazz club just so he could play for an audience.”

Slocumb parodies a résumé as Ray compares himself to another candidate and becomes inescapably aware of his unconventional musical upbringing and the socioeconomic obstacles that he’s needed to overcome. However, this moment also highlights his determination to do so from a very young age and the way music has always been intrinsically woven into his being. In this way, he and the opposing candidate are led by the same commonality in spite of their differences.

“[Ray] would tell you that music is truly a universal language, and that we, the listeners, will always impose our own fears and biases, our own hopes and hunger, on whatever we hear. He would tell you that the rhythm that spurred on Tchaikovsky is the same rhythm that a kid in a redneck North Carolina town would beat with a stick against a fallen tree.”

Classical music as a motif in the novel is a force which is both ostracizing—as the industry is a hotbed or racial discrimination—and unifying, as a shared love of music brings people together. This moment highlights both of those aspects, presenting music as both a shared language and a canvas on which to instill one’s own prejudices and fears. The image of Tchaikovsky and “a kid in a redneck North Carolina Town” mirrors the novel’s geographical scope.