Guitar lessons offered as intramural activity

MATTAWA - The Wahluke School District's intramural program is a lot different FROM the one your grandpa used to know. He played basketball. These students play guitars.

What used to be called intramural sports ARE now intramural activities. Besides sports, students in the after school programs have classes such as guitar, cooking, board games, lego robotics, art, sign language, Rosetta Stone, dance and Missoula Childrens Theatre.

That works out just fine for Roberto Moran, a recent addition to school district staff. He is a migrant program recruiter and a classical guitarist. He snapped up the opportunity to teach.

That's not classical in the classical sense but in Moran's sense of classical. He arranges pop music - The Beatles, Elvis - to be played in the classical style. It's easy listening for a dinner party.

"Music is forever. You can't misplace it or lose it," Moran said. "These kids will be learning all of theirs lives. It's taken me 60 years."

The other change was to make intramurals available to not only high school students but all students, K-12. This is the fourth year that Wahluke School District has done the intramural program this way.

"It was started so that our younger kids, K-6, would have the opportunities to participate," Activities Director Cody Marlow said. "Our classes are taught by various district staff as well as community members."

Students sign up for intramurals monthly. The program serves from 50 to as many as 200 students in a given month.

"It just depends on what classes are being offered and what time of year it is," Marlow said. "Overall, I think this has been a great thing for our kids. It has provided some pretty amazing opportunities for them."

Moran's class is one such opportunity. He usually has between10-20 students. The district has 30 guitars.

Moran teaches basic acoustic guitar - chord fingerings and strums and arpeggios. If the students branch out to jazz or heavy metal as they get older, well, that's fine with him. For now it will be classical learning.

The students and Moran get together in a music room at Morris Schott Elementary three times a week, three weeks of each month. They are taught at the same time, but in groups of similar ability.

Moran, from Comalcalco, Tabasco, plays a lot of Mexico's music and music from all over Latin America. He plays American and international popular music.

"Rock, salsa, blues, jazz, rumba, samba, bossa nova, you name it," he said.

Moran was 13 when he picked up the guitar in 1966. Padre Ricardo Zambron Levy of the Catholic parish in Comalcalco was his teacher.

"He was a brilliant man," Moran said. "He was a musician, and engineer and psychologist. He played several musical instruments. He was a member of the Congregation of Missionaries of the Holy Spirit."

Moran and several boys his age learned from the priest and formed a band to accompany the chorus at mass. They did that for seven years.

"We practiced a lot," he said.

As often happens with church musicians and singers, the boys decided to try the secular world as Los Garapachos - they were all skinny. They had a singer, a guitar, a bass, a requinto and battery.

"We became pretty popular. People in our area still remember us," Moran said.

At 33, a lot changed for Moran. He came to America, living in several places. Before coming to Mattawa, he lived in Seattle, Yakima and Tri-Cities.

He came to Mattawa a few years ago planning to work for a proposed auto parts store, handling its computer needs. That plan did not work out, but Moran stayed.

"I did farm work for a year and a half," he said.

And he played the guitar.

Moran was playing a gig at the Ginkgo Forest Winery tasting room for Lois and Mike Thiede when Wahluke Music Director James Jydstrup noticed him and made his acquaintance. That led him to Aaron Chavez and the recruiter opportunity.

When Moran learned the school had 30 guitars available for teaching K-12 students, he became excited. He started teaching classical guitar for kids in February of 2014.

"I love it," he said. "These kids are a treasure. They learn rapidly. They are very smart."