In this article, I document a series of pedagogical responses in my high school instrumental music classroom following the events of Eric Garner's murder in New York City. Foregrounding traditions of black radical politics and aesthetics originating with the Black Power Movement in the 1960s, I explore their implications for classroom practice in a larger movement against the systemic killings of Black Americans in the United States. In this work, ideas of politicized listening, multimodality, response, and collectivity emerge, alongside a process of "fumbling" through issues of essentialism and authority, race and aesthetics.