Joe Arciniega
The Laredo Boys and Girls Club (BGC) of Laredo has diverged from its long established, ongoing, and successful regimen of competitive sports for Laredo youth by making a leap into the realm of the arts with the establishment of the BGC Music Studio at the Lamar Bruni Vergara club in South Laredo.
Board president Joe Arciniega said the studio for contemporary music instruction and performance is but a first step to engage children 6 to 12 years of age in the arts.
The studio was co-founded in 2018 by board member Arciniega, who was not yet president of the board, and José R. Villa, a recent graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, which is considered the premier music college and performing arts conservatory in the United States.
While in Boston, Villa taught music through a Berklee work-study program for community non-profits that offered music education, including one that inter-phased with the Boys and Girls Club. He envisioned such a music program for children in Laredo.
In January 2018, months before his graduation in May, Villa approached Arciniega after reading a story about him in The Laredo Morning Times on his involvement with the Boys and Girls Clubs and other charitable endeavors. Their initial meeting and subsequent communications were the propitious beginning for a program that has generated much interest and enthusiasm in elementary and middle school students — and their parents.
“Learning to play an instrument and making music a part of your life should not be expensive. It should be accessible to everyone,” said Villa. “The BGC now offers Laredo students the opportunity to experience what they can become when music is part of their lives,” he said.
José R. Villa
Well-equipped with pianos, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, ukulele, drums, percussion, computers, and video and audio recording equipment, the BGC Music Studio opened with a summer program in July 2018,
Since its inception, the music initiative has not lacked for willing students, nor for parents who recognize and support the innovative opportunity for their children to learn, play, perform, and create music.
Villa said that students in the initial four-week pilot became acquainted with instruments and learned to read music, and how to play and perform. Music theory, ear training, and recording were also part of the curriculum.
“They also had fun. They wanted to be there. I could see it in their faces. Some took the opportunity and instruction very seriously. The return on their $25 tuition fee was a great one,” Villa said.
“We have now reached 100 students through the program. Our mission to offer this opportunity through music has been extremely rewarding,” he said.
Villa is staging two Summer Music Camps, the first from June 3 to June 28, and the second from July 8 to July 23 at the LBV campus studio.
“José and I met at just the right time, and as it turned out, this was the moment to lurch forward with the BGC Music Studio,” said Arciniega.
“José’s well-designed plan for the music program evidenced his love of music, business training, drive, and what he had learned at Berklee about creative entrepreneurship and marketing. I proposed that the Boy s and Girls Club of Laredo board of directors move quickly to secure José Villa as music director and the $30,000 for instruments and the technology that he would need to begin the program. We were also lucky to find a couple of willing early benefactors,” Arciniega said.
“There are amazing young talents in Laredo that we can nurture, not only in music but also in an arts program in full that could encompass theater and speech,” he continued. “Our reach with the music program will be significant. It already has been. We are better defining what we need and finding the money to sustain it,” he said.
Music has been part of Villa’s life since he was eight. He is a graduate of Cigarroa High School and the Vidal M. Treviño School of Fine Arts and Communication. He was accepted at Berklee by audition, and it was there he learned music education, arrangement, composition, vocal writing, and marketing music talent.
A trumpet player under the tutelage of his mentor in Laredo, Bobby López, Villa switched to piano at Berklee in 2014. When he ran short of money that would keep him in school in Boston, he came back to Laredo and then had the good fortune that Dr. Ricardo Cigarroa — aware of both Villa’s talent and plight — underwrote the cost of getting Villa back to Berklee.
“I know what happens here,” Arciniega said of the BGC mission and its impact.
“It changes lives,” he said, speaking from his own experiences as a youngster who learned to swim and box at the original BGC campus on Moctezuma. “This is where children build character, where this age group finds opportunities and a safe environment to learn and flourish, whether it is in sports, and now in music. With a great amount of enthusiasm and care from staff, countless volunteers, and a board that is forward-thinking, this organization does the work that was once part of the curriculum of elementary and middle schools. We are inviting school districts and private schools to support what we do to better prepare their students to reach their educational and career goals,” he said.
Arciniega said he would like to see a music studio at every BGC campus, replete with a stage for performances.
“The original campus is land-locked, but we can find a way to make this work. We are in planning and fundraising overdrive,” he said.
[For more information on the BGC Music Studios summer camps, call José Villa at (956) 441-4214. To contribute financially to the program, call Joe Arciniega at (956) 645-8554.]
