In four locations scattered across Phoenix, students, mentors and volunteers alike are finding a sense of belonging through music lessons provided by Harmony Project Phoenix.
Harmony Project Phoenix, located at 700 East Jefferson Street in downtown Phoenix, is a nonprofit after-school mentoring program that provides free instruments and music lessons to students from low-income communities. Founded in 2015 by Diogo Pereira, the Phoenix chapter branches from the original Harmony Project founded in Los Angeles in 2001.
“We are changing lives through music,” Pereira said. “Music is just a tool to become a positive factor in a child’s life and change their entire trajectory.”
Harmony Project Phoenix has a three-tiered mission: to promote the positive development of children through music, to build healthy communities and to develop children as ambassadors of peace, hope and understanding, Pereira said.
Research conducted at Northwestern University shows underprivileged children growing up in low-income environments are at an increased chance of crime, poverty and behavioral health disorders in the future.
Harmony Project’s community-based music training can offset the negative impact of poverty on children’s brain function, behavior and academic achievement, the study showed.
When students come to Harmony Project, Pereira said they sign an agreement that the program is committed to them from when they begin to the day they finish high school.
Harmony Project Phoenix began with 24 students at Pan-American Charter School, whose three campuses are located on Indian School Road near Interstate 17. Now with 150 students, it has grown to reach other locations in and around downtown, such as Create Academy Charter School, Arizona School for the Arts and Salvation Army Phoenix Citadel, Pereira said.
Pan-American’s assistant principal Todd Wade, who partnered with Pereira to start the program in 2015, said there’s more components to Harmony Project Phoenix than just “an after-school program.”
“They’re out there performing with the ASU orchestra and the Mesa Arts Center,” Wade said. “It gives them something of value.”
Before the first note
In a 2017-2018 summary, 12 teaching artists and 16 volunteer teachers provided 2,200 music lessons to Harmony Project Phoenix students. Each student received an average of 144 hours of music instruction a year.
At Pan-American Charter School, 97 percent of elementary school students (kindergarten to seventh grade) are Hispanic, and 98 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, Wade said.
Pereira said most of Harmony Project Phoenix’s students come from south Phoenix and Maryvale, places that have high percentages of gang problems and crime rates.
“Some parents are working two or three jobs, so the kids spend a lot of time by themselves,” Pereira said. “If they don’t have something productive to do after school, they will build their own relationships — sometimes with gangs.”
Pereira said in Brazil, his native country, there is a saying: Put an instrument in a child’s hand before a gang member gives them a gun.
Meghan Ruel, who has played the violin for 20 years and started instructing for Harmony Project in March 2016, said teaching has always been a passion of hers. She teaches at Pan-American on Tuesdays and conducts the junior orchestra, Orquesta Infantil, at Arizona School for the Arts, located at 1410 North Third Street, on Saturdays.
With these kinds of organizations, Ruel said instructors are not only teaching children how to learn music, but inviting them into a world they might’ve never stepped into.
“Some of them have never heard a symphony orchestra, and so you have to intrigue them and make them listen in a way that opens their ears to other people,” Ruel said. “When you play music with someone else, it’s not a competition anymore. It’s about saying something together and figuring out how we can all say it in a similar way.”
Flor Retes, 16, has been with Harmony Project since she was a freshman at Pan-American Charter School. Now a junior, Retes said Harmony Project has allowed her to have many opportunities to perform and become independent.
“I think that’s important to have in an everyday lifestyle — learning how to work with other people with different backgrounds,” Retes said.
Retes said this is her third year playing the violin through the free lessons and with a borrowed instrument.
“If I didn’t get this opportunity, perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten an interest in it (music) as much as I do now,” Retes said.
Mentorship
Ruel said her biggest passion right now is teaching empathy.
“We have several schools that are represented from the entire Valley that are a part of this project,” Ruel said. “They all have really different backgrounds, they’re not all best friends, but they all respect each other. They’re all willing to understand one another.”
Ruel said the success of Harmony Project takes a lot of people and a lot of organization. The program is a place where kids come to stay, so Ruel said something right must be happening.
“Diogo doesn’t take a lot of immediate credit for the success of the program,” Ruel said. “But he understands the value of private teaching and ensemble learning. He understands that there are several pillars that have to come into play for children to feel accepted and to feel like they’re part of something reliable, safe, and something they want to come back to.”
Ruel said she’s noticed enough of a difference to confidently state that students who stay in the program tend to develop a higher self-esteem, a higher self-confidence, an ability to articulate ideas more clearly, a sense of pride, and a sense of leadership.
“It’s contagious,” Ruel said. “If you see someone so ready to lead and to learn and to get ahead, then naturally others will not want to stay behind. You hope that it kind of magnifies everyone’s desire to get better.”
Ruel said Harmony Project is a preventative measure for anything negative that can impact a youth’s life.
Director of Orquesta Latino Caribeña Leslie Pozo said he grew up and worked for El Sistema in Valenzuela, a program similar to Harmony Project. As a music educator for more than 25 years, Pozo said the impact can be witnessed in the long term.
Pozo said he loves to see his students learning and achieving success in all aspects of life.
“I don’t teach musicians,” Pozo said. “I just help kids to be better human beings.”
A Musical Revolution
Sarah Cowan, a neurologic music therapist and clinical training director at Neurologic Music Therapy Services of Arizona, said music can be very useful in achieving nonmusical goals.
“If you’re working on musical skills, you’re also working on skills that you can generalize to other situations,” Cowan said. “We can use that to help develop cognitive skills as well, including social and emotional goals, learning social skills and processing emotions.”
Research conducted on Harmony Project LA by Northwestern University found that music training can help erase the negative effects of poverty. Additionally, the study showed that after two years, music training enhanced “socioeconomically impoverished” students’ speech processing.
When Cowan talks about music therapy with others, she said the common response is how important music has been in making their emotions feel validated or allowing them to express their emotions.
“A lot of people will also share how being part of a music group or community was really important to them,” Cowan said. “People tend to think most about those emotional areas when I’m talking to the average person about how they view music.”
Cowan said just as music can connect us, it can also make us vulnerable.
“If there’s a shared musical knowledge or music that is important to a young group of a certain culture, that can be a really powerful connecting experience,” Cowan said.
Beyond that, Cowan said music helps with cognition, attention span and managing oneself so social skills become easier.
“Music can support a person’s brain and thought processing and give them something to do so that the social or connecting part isn’t so hard,” Cowan said.
Looking ahead
Wade said charter schools are a good place for Harmony Project as they normally don’t have the structure to provide music programs.
“What we’re really hoping is all these mini-players stick with it so by the time they hit middle school or high school, it’s realistic that they be able to play maybe at a university,” Wade said. “Or who knows? Some could get university scholarships or study music.”
Even so, Wade said the main problem with keeping Harmony Project Phoenix afloat is the finances. At Pan-American, he said transportation has been an issue in retaining students, as the bus system does not account for after-school programs.
Pereira said since the program is free for students, parents are asked to volunteer at least twice throughout the year as a way to give back and help with carpool.
To keep the program running, Pereira said Harmony Project Phoenix has to raise $200,000 annually. Much of this comes from school finances, partnerships with foundations and donations.
“What I’ve been learning from the last four years is that in Arizona, the philanthropic vision is not very solidified as it is in the East Coast,” Pereira said. “Here, we have one board member, so it can be a challenge to have people know about us and support us.”
Ultimately, Pereira said his vision for the project is to grow.
“We have a lot of kids in Phoenix who need the program,” Pereira said.
Retes said whenever she picks up an instrument in the future, she will think of Harmony Project and the opportunities it gave her and so many others.
“Even if music is not something you wish to continue doing in the future,” Retes said, “it’s still a great experience with not only learning an instrument, which is a great thing to do, especially at a young age, but it’s also great because of the people you get to learn with and the experiences you make.”
Contact the reporter at amalabad@asu.edu.
