Ezinma: How Beyoncé’s violinist is tearing up the classical rulebook
Growing up, violin prodigy Meredith Ezinma Ramsay hated her middle name.
“I was so embarrassed by it,” she says. “I was like, ‘ Why couldn’t you have called me something normal, like Haley?’”
She was given the name by her father, a mathematician from Guyana. Derived from the Igbo language of Nigeria, it means “true beauty” or “good fortune” - but Ramsay didn’t appreciate its significance until she read Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece Things Fall Apart.
In Achebe’s novel, Ezinma is the king’s beloved daughter, whose spirit and intellect are so great that he wishes she had been born a boy, and could inherit his kingdom.
After putting down the book, Ramsay says she “felt like I wanted to walk into her shoes - it’s such a powerful name”.
Now, aged, 30, she’s reclaimed the name for herself. When she takes to the stage - whether she’s part of Beyoncé’s band, or fronting her solo work - Ramsay is Ezinma.“It felt really bold, like a declaration of who I wanted to be as a woman, and the woman I wanted to become.”
Ezinma has become one of the most talked-about classical musicians of her generation.
She fell in love with the violin as a toddler, after seeing other kids at her pre- school sweeping a bow over the strings. “For whatever reason, I knew deep inside my little three-year- old body that it was destiny,” she says.
Years of gruelling practice followed, taking her from Nebraska to New York’s prestigious New School. There, a boyfriend introduced her to music production, and she became “obsessed” with the idea of fusing an orchestral sound with the heavy beats of trap - a subgenre of hip-hop.
Before long, she was hired by Kendrick Lamar, SZA and Mac Miller to add strings to their music. That led to an appearance at Beyoncé’s historic Coachella set.
But her solo career really took off when she filmed herself playing along to Future’s Mask Off - showing off bold sautillé and flying spicatto techniques, as she added new dimensions to the song’s kung-fu aesthetic.
The video went viral and landed Ezinma a deal with Decca Records, who recently released her debut EP, Classical Bae - which puts a new spin on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Bach’s G Major Prelude, amongst others.
Each of Ezinma’s pieces deconstructs familiar movements and motifs, then re-contextualises them with stuttering hi-hats and foundation- shaking sub bass.
“It’s a very very fine line between cool and corny,” the musician admits. “I spent a lot of time making sure that everything feels great and relevant. That’s really the concept.”