Daziel Perez Pagan speaks in a gently authoritative tenor – yet his guitar playing is the exact opposite: Complex and propulsive. The 20-year-old moved to Cleveland from Puerto Rico in the 7th grade.
“I didn't even really enjoy music as much when I was younger,” he said. “I was mostly doing … a bit of sports. I liked dirt bikes, ATVs, that's what I was doing before.”
Then, he discovered the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, which works with students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Every student in the program is loaned a classical guitar, which they can own after completing a certain level of proficiency. It’s one of several programs in Northeast Ohio connecting people with free instruments.
Pagan said getting a free guitar was transformational.
“It was amazing,” he said. “I didn't really have the money to buy a nice classical guitar.”
Erik Mann, executive director of the society, remembers the first time he heard Pagan play.
“I was completely blown away,” he said. “It turned out that this was after two lessons.”
Through playing music, Pagan developed other skills too. He said he overcame his shyness once he started playing live. Over the past several years, he’s written music for student films and begun teaching others. He’s even exploring luthier schools with an eye toward building electric guitars.
The benefits of music
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame holds instrument drives each year for area nonprofits. Kathryn Clusman, director of education at the Rock Hall, said access to instruments is “huge” for students.
“It's everything from that sense of ownership of that instrument to that confidence that they can play it,” she said. “When they have that instrument that they own, they can use it during the summer. They don't turn it in at the end of the school year.”
One of the Rock Hall’s partners is the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning. CEO Emma Parker said learning to play an instrument does more than just teaching creativity and reading music.
"We're also working on some of those social emotional skill sets, like confidence building, social awareness, self-awareness and also potentially things like math and reading," she said. "We know that the arts are so aligned with that development for cognitive and social-emotional areas for youth."
The center offers free, 10-week music courses for Cleveland residents. They collect instruments throughout the year and make them available for students to borrow. Once they’re proficient, they have a chance to keep the instrument. That’s what happened to another Cleveland 7th grader, Kacey Compton.
“When I first heard the sound of guitars, I just really liked it, because I went to many concerts and thought, ‘Yeah, I wanna do that someday,’” he said.
He’s been playing for four years and recalled being speechless when he got a guitar to keep.
“It was a big package of emotion,” he said. “It was very surprising. Once I got it, I didn't even know what to say.”
Kacey’s mother, Trudy, said that coming out of the pandemic, she and her husband were laid off and couldn’t afford a guitar. The fact that he earned it with his talent makes it even more special.
Although her son’s academics haven’t changed much, she said she noticed that he’s become more responsible. And he always makes sure to finish his homework before heading to guitar class.
