Andrew Jackson School Band HOME Featured in Ben Kalina Documentary

Guitar Hero

A documentary about Andrew Jackson School's rock ring is a tribute to a instructor's dedication through tough times

January. 26, 2017

Local filmmaker Ben Kalina says that his favorite track past Andrew Jackson School'south rock band is "All I Want," a cover of Kodaline'south 2022 incredibly bleak single. It's a painful and admissive song, the kind of thing that y'all'd hear over a bummer moment in an episode of Scrubs or in the background of a drippy indie flick—say, 2014'due south The Fault In Our Stars. Kalina doesn't beloved information technology because the band plays it with the most proficiency, or considering it's the most spot-on embrace. He enjoys information technology because, for the band—called Home —it's the song that takes them abode. They've often played information technology to close out practice sessions—a cooldown lap of sorts.

Abode has been kicking effectually since 2010, as the passion project of a teacher at Andrew Jackson named Chris Agerakis. Kalina says he first heard of the band through discussion of mouth; he and his family alive in the neighborhood, and his starting time impression was that it was an 'aw shucks' kind of after school program—kind of like a airtight circuit AV club for kids to mess around in for a few hours before heading home for the twenty-four hours. His start existent gustatory modality for HOME was came when he was walking his dog by the schoolhouse one day, and heard the shockingly well-arranged sounds of an actual rock group emanating from Andrew Jackson'due south cellar.

"I really wondered what was going on," says Kalina.

At starting time, Kalina's interest was purely passing. But after digging in a bit, he took a serious interest. Hither was a fully operational school of rock operating out of one of Philadelphia's chronically underfunded public schools, one that gives several actual shows per twelvemonth and gives kids a genuine early-life background in rock guitar, drums and keyboard.

To Kalina, the programme itself wasn't unbelievable—teachers in cash-strapped districts the nation over make special things happen for kids out of their ain grit, gumption and pocket change. Simply the totality of it was downright impressive. Agerakis has taught nearly 100 of his students musical proficiency in his ain gratuitous fourth dimension, and never received an extra penny's worth of stipend from the school district for doing it, all the while waiting on a new contract that hasn't materialized since he was first hired.

It's the Passion of the Music Teacher. It'due south loud and empty-headed and beautiful, kids of all races and backgrounds meeting to learn, en masse, The Beatles, Of Monsters and Men. It's impossible to watch Agerakis leading his band —typically featuring multiple drumsets, guitars and keyboards—and non smile. There's Agerakis, surveying his crew of center school kids from behind an acoustic guitar—not his forte, he says, as he'due south a "drummer first, a piano player second and a hackish guitar player in distant 3rd"—as they hammer out tunes by artists ranging from The Ronettes to Queen. The kids look intensely focused on post-obit the leader and hitting all the right notes. It's less Steve Vai and more Guitar Hero. It's equally ambrosial as it is heartening. And it'due south the kind of matter that Kalina just couldn't help but make a film nigh.

"The fact that the ring is called HOME is non a coincidence. I think it'south a dwelling house for these kids," says Kalina. "It's a grade of cocky-expression that they don't have access to in other means. It's a way for them to excel, a way for them to accept a little sense of pride. It's a social group, a network that they carry with them all the fourth dimension."

Kalina is a Vermonter by nascence, but spent almost a decade in New York's Hudson Valley before arriving in Philadelphia and enrolling in Temple'due south picture school. He now runs Philly'southward Mangrove Media , a video product company focused on creating grooming films for companies and commercials. He's also an accolade-winning documentarian, focusing primarily on climate change issues. His 2013 documentary Shored Upward , about the outcome of rising sea levels on coastal cities, won a Sundance Movie Festival prize—and a sweetness $25,000 grant.

If he hadn't see HOME, Kalina would probably be working on another environmental documentary. But he's just that enamored with their story, and with what Agerakis has been able to do in spite of a funding shortfall. His movie about the Andrew Jackson School's stone band is called, simply, Dwelling .  It chronicles the successes, but also the struggles, of the band—in particular how and if it will continue when central students graduate, and Agerakis grows weary of the (uncompensated) step. The moving-picture show will air on WHYY in leap or summertime, depending on when Kalina can finish editing. He's  launching an IndieGoGo campaign next week to raise the cash to hire an editor to help.

"It'south but then heartbreaking, living in a city and watching what'due south happening in the schoolhouse district," says Kalina. "I've been wanting to practise something for a while that in some small way helps to create some dialogue well-nigh what'southward going on in the school arrangement. Later on I started finding out more about the band and talking to Chris, I realized that information technology was a really great way of talking, cinematically, almost the programs that can happen when you have an incredibly dedicated instructor involved."

HOME practices two to iii days a week later on school, and Agerakis is particularly proud of the fact that his kids never miss practice; information technology'due south one of the metrics that he uses to measure the success of his program. "I wait over the attendance sail occasionally, and I have kids with over 100 percent attendance—102 per centum, sometimes—who are attending the optional extra practices," Agerakis says. "It shows that it makes these kid want to come up to schoolhouse, and to stay there belatedly."

Agerakis says that a big part of keeping students interested in the band is electing to play songs that they detect non only challenging, simply unlike. He rankles against another school stone ensembles that think kids' attentions are better kept when they're performing hip hop or, as he calls them, "carbohydrate pop" songs. His method is to claiming them with music that they're non familiar with, but that they stand a take chances to autumn in love with. "We've never done things that other ensembles practice," he says.

The devotion that some of the kids evidence to the group is astonishing. Agerakis says that an uncommonly talented fifth-grade keyboardist who plays in his inferior band recently got into Masterman, the magnet school regularly listed among the all-time in Philadelphia. She elected to stay at Andrew Jackson then that she could remain with Domicile. Agerakis says that it's a validating statement about the outcome that his work has on kids.

"It was extremely touching. Simply my kickoff reaction was: we should take had that give-and-take before yous declined," he says with a laugh.

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That passion, from students and teacher, was part of the attraction for Kalina. He has worked with students himelf; before in his career, he worked in a program that helped teach kids how to express themselves through video. Merely he says Agerakis' work is different from anything he's seen—that his drive is higher, and his programme exceptionally effective.

"For a lot of kids, they don't necessarily find a fashion to limited themselves through other disciplines in school. Information technology tin can be difficult for them to find themselves," says Kalina. "Music, art—these things are irreplaceable. And y'all see that with Dwelling."

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/andrew-jackson-school-band-chris-agerakis-ben-kalina/

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