Guitar Hero: Jen Pastalo Dacpano’s Urban Guitar Revolution
About five years ago, Jen Pastalo Dacpano got the urge to learn guitar. But, unlike many of us who experience a similar urge in a wave that then recedes, Jen was hell-bent. No matter that the school psychologist, wife of Satchel’s owner Andrew Casalini and mother of 4 was nursing her youngest at the time. She simply woke before dawn and practiced until the kids woke.
“They say it’s not the years that you practice, it’s the hours you put in,” said Jen. “I was a woman obsessed.”
In 2009, after 18 months of learning guitar, she approached the principal at the Odyssey School, where her kids went to school, about teaching an afterschool group guitar class. She had also been leading a guitar club at her workplace, East High School. Because both were so popular, Jen was compelled to start a business, City Strings Guitar. Three years later, and under the new name Urban Guitar Revolution, the program is in ten schools, has five teachers and has served almost 200 kids. It’s important to Jen that the class be affordable. Right now, the classes are $13.50 and scholarships are offered.
“As a school psychologist, I’ve always been in classrooms trying to build cooperative learning communities,” said Jen. “I think it’s so much more powerful when music is involved.”
In late June, Jen and her partner Nicole Severson, launched a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign to raise money to fund the publication of their unique curriculum, which combines guitar instruction with cooperative games.
“Our curriculum allows kids to get to know each other and feel like a community, creating a more cohesive class,” says Jen. “For me, the most exciting thing about our program is seeing students support one another.”
Jen will go part-time at East High School next year so that she can focus on expanding Urban Guitar Revolution to more schools throughout Denver, which is why the curriculum is so valuable. She is also working to create a business plan modeled after Tom’s Shoes:
“The concept is that for every guitar lesson you buy, you get another person to play guitar. That is the dream, to have the higher socio-economic schools support the free- and reduced-lunch schools,” said Jen.
She and Nicole also dream of one day opening the Park Hill Music School.
“Imagine yellow school buses bringing kids to music school!”
To donate to Urban Guitar Revolution’s Kickstarter campaign or learn more about the program, visit their website at citystringsguitar.com, email urbanguitarrevolution@gmail.com or call 720-341-9737. A “Kickstart Your Day Brunch” to benefit the program will be held July 22 from 10a-1p at Satchel’s on 6th (1710 E 6th Ave) featuring a youth open mic, silent auction and, of course, brunch.