As riot police encircled Place de la République last week, lobbing teargas canisters to disperse demonstrators, the conductor Étienne Jarrier and his orchestra played on. They kept playing even after everyone else had disappeared and teargas was being fired into the central Paris square.
It was only when Jarrier noticed his musicians were being directly targeted that he ordered them to stop. “There were teargas canisters landing in the double bass and music stand cases, and starting fires the musicians had to stamp out,” he told the Guardian.
The Orchestre du Nouveau Monde (the ONM, or New World Orchestra) is used to accompanying protests. Co-founded by Jarrier in ۲۰۲۲, the Paris-based ensemble is made up of hundreds of young professional and amateur musicians, all volunteers and all committed to blend classical music and activism, particularly social and climate justice.
The orchestra describes itself as “anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, environmentalist and committed to de-growth”, with the dual aim of linking artistic performance with activism and increasing awareness of classical music among the young rather than its traditional “white bourgeois and elderly” following.
In ۲۰۲۲, ONM played at the foot of a melting Alpine glacier; two years later it was outside the headquarters of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), performing a parody of an anthem popular with Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis. Last year, it formed a welcoming committee outside a television station for the Eurosceptic RN leader Marine Le Pen, and played the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
“We’re very happy to play at demonstrations,” Jarrier, ۲۵, said. “There are lots of anthems for social struggles in France, like the Marseillaise or the International or activist music of the last centuries, but it’s important to play music that appeals to new generations.”
For the recent protests, its repertoire has included The Hanging Tree from The Hunger Games, and the theme from Marvel’s The Avengers film. “Music from a superhero movie on a day of social struggle seemed appropriate” said the conductor.
Jarrier, whose late father was a photographer and whose mother is an archeologist, studied classical music and the clarinet until the age of ۱۷, but is a self-taught conductor.
Photographs of last Saturday’s protests show Jarrier, baton raised, conducting the ONM against the backdrop of the ۱۰-metre high bronze monument representing Marianne, symbol of the French republic, and a dense white cloud of teargas.
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French security forces, including the CRS riot police, were unimpressed. The squadrons of police, often nicknamed Robocops, have been widely criticised for their aggressive policing of recent demonstrations, particularly their liberal use of stun grenades (that emit a deafening explosion), flash-balls, baton charges and teargas against protesters. Yet they seemed impotent to stop those looting shops and destroying public buildings.
On Saturday, Jarrier had invited musicians to join the orchestra at Place de la République, the starting point for the official demonstration by high-school students protesting a failing and unjust education system, and by unions angry with the government’s failure to address wider grievances.
“It was a day of what we call a convergence of struggles,” Jarrier said. “The orchestra is engaged politically in the fight, so our presence was necessary on such a day. We appealed to any musicians with an instrument who wanted to play to come to Place de la République before the official protest march starting at ۱pm.
“We planned to make music when it set off,” he added.
As between ۴۰۰ and ۵۰۰ musicians gathered in the square, orchestra members alerted the CRS that they would be present and performing, Jarrier said. “We asked them to let us know if they plan to charge or gas the square, and they said they would warn us,” he said.
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“While we were rehearsing, a very happy crowd of people of all ages gathered around us. Then the teargas canisters started being thrown around the orchestra. Not directly at us at that point. After a while there was almost nobody there except us.
“Clearly the aim was to clear a peaceful crowd from the place, which is quite serious and something we’ve not seen before. But even when the square was empty all around us, the CRS continued to gas the orchestra. After ۲۰ minutes we had no choice but to stop playing.”
Jarrier said the musicians were “stunned” and “truly shocked”.
“It was quite scary,” he said. “We’d reassured the musicians before the protest saying: ‘Don’t worry – they’re not going to use teargas or charge us when we’re peaceful.’”
As the musicians packed away instruments, the orchestra’s security volunteers formed a human chain between the musicians and police.
“We are very angry about what happened,” Jarrier said. “It’s an extremely serious shift in maintaining order; the [government] is not listening to demands and is responding not with politics but police.
“It’s trying to divert attention from a legitimate movement that demands better public services, better lives. By making this about violent police repression they divert attention from the real concerns. We are not the martyrs, but the image of an orchestra being gassed should be an alarm signal,” he said.
The French Ministry of Defence and the Paris police prefecture were asked to comment on the use of teargas at Place de la République, but did not respond.
