A piano bar singer refused to hit a bad note when an obnoxious white man kept interrupting her song and touching her keyboard.
A video of Janelle Walker, who is Black, reemerged on the Instagram account Leave Black People Alone. It seems that simple task — leaving her alone — was hard to do for one bar patron who, back in September, kept gravitating to the singer during her set.
In the hilarious video, Walker did not miss a beat as she put her own “don’t mess with me” spin on the lyrics of The Village People’s “YMCA.”
As she launched into the first verse of the song, singing “young man, there’s no need to feel down,” the man touched her keyboard. She fired off the first warning without even breaking character, singing, “Young man, I will kick your a– out…”
Later, he approached her again from behind, but Janelle must have had eyes in the back of her head. She sensed him hovering, and without looking up, kept pounding the keys and singing, “Don’t f–k with me, bro…”
Another customer tried to steer the man away from her performance, but it was no use. Fed up, she changed up the lyrics again and tore into him: “Stay there, and I’m sure you will find many ways to have a good time — Don’t f–king touch me — It’s fun to stay at the YMCA, Y— Get the f–k out of my face.”
Many in the comments section on Instagram had the same question: where was security?
Others zeroed in on why the man felt so comfortable crowding her in the first place. “They literally don’t know wtf boundaries or space is,” one top comment read, a reference to the sense of entitlement some white people feel toward Black people’s bodies and space, even during a performance.
As one male commenter put it: “Been there. I can only imagine what it’s like for a woman in this situation. You did very well to not just slam the piano lid on his fingers.”
In the video’s caption, Walker explained that the bar had no barrier between her and the audience and lacked security guards.
“I had no other option but to be direct, stern and firm,” the performer wrote. “I needed the audience to understand that there was no joking going on between me and this guy. Because what GROWN adult comes in and touches a musician’s instrument while they are working/playing? I would expect this from a child, not a full-grown man.”
Walker said the audience was “on my side,” and the man left shortly after the song ended. Commenters, meanwhile, loved the new lyrics. “I like this version of the song better,” one wrote. “I will now sing those lyrics,” said another. A third simply called it “the remix!”
