At the Plummer Home for Boys, Eddy Diaz discovered a new tool to help cope with his life. It's called a piano.
On Wednesday afternoon, the soft-spoken 18-year-old sat down in the music room in this big old house on the ocean and played a song.
"Do you know 'Für Elise'?" he asks. "It's Beethoven."
And then, this young man with diamond studs in his ears and a tattoo on his arm began to play the great composer's love song.
"When I play, I'm in a different zone," he says when he's done. "It lets you forget things."
Asked how he came to live at the Plummer Home, a group home for 16 teenage boys on Salem's Winter Island, Eddy answered that his mom died when he was 6.
"Life has never been the same since then," he says.
The boys often arrive here with horrific case histories. It's not unusual for a 13-year-old to have lived 10 other places and gone to 10 different schools. Too often, they have suffered abuse at the hands of people who were supposed to protect them.
The music program — like basketball and snowboarding — is not a cure-all for the trauma they experienced, but one more way to bring some normalcy into their lives.
About a year and a half ago, Diaz picked up his first instrument. Now he plays piano, guitar and some bass. He composes music. His song "Photograph Island" is featured on the first Plummer Home CD, which was recorded at the house last month. Another resident, Levaughn Fussell, plays bass on the track.
The CD lets people hear for themselves how music is improving some lives.
Click to go to sample songs (below).
"This is about a lot more than making music," says James Lister, the home's executive director.
What began in storage space in the attic, the music program now occupies a large first-floor room, filled with an assortment of donated pianos, keyboards, drums and guitars, where posters of The Beatles and Jim Morrison hang on the walls.
Some of the residents take private lessons, and professional musicians volunteer to come to the house to play alongside the boys. There's talk about an open mike night at a Salem coffeehouse.
When Dasheem Dew came to the Plummer Home, he wore a hood over his head to cover his face and responded to questions with one-word answers. When he wrote the rap song "Tears are Flying," also included on the CD, the staff was blown away:
"I've been through hell and back
it's like I've seen the devil with my own eyes
rising from the ashes it's a new me
been locked up in a prison hidin' from the world
tears are flying like gunshots
taken away from my family."
Aaron Katz is a professional musician who started working with the boys in August. He helped write the music for Dew's rap song and the lyrics for the piece Diaz composed. What's been most thrilling, he says, is to see the boys develop enough trust to dig down deep and express themselves.
The CD also includes two holiday songs, "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." The staff and the boys, even those not drawn to the music program, crowded around a microphone one day to record the Christmas classics. There is joy in the boys' loud — at times, shouting — voices.
Jeff Rajchel, the program director at the Plummer Home, is in two bands himself. He knows musicians have no choice but to look other people in the eye, to read cues and to listen. Already, some boys got jobs they never could have without these improved social skills.
In fifth grade, Rajchel got exposed to musical instruments the way many children are, through a school band program. He picked trumpet. The boys under his watch never got the same opportunity, and that's a "travesty" they have an obligation to fix.
So the staff introduced harmony to boys who have known little.
"I never thought I'd be playing music," Diaz says. "I never thought it would be a part of my life."
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Staff writer Susan Flynn can be reached at sflynn@salemnews.com or by calling 978-338-2658.
Performed by Plummer Home Family. Arrangement and music by A.Z. Katz
Photograph Island
Written and arranged by E. Diaz and A.Z. Katz. Keyboards: E. Diaz; Drums: W. Monto; Bass: L. Fussell; Acoustic Guitar and Synthesizer: A. Z. Katz
Tears Are Flying
Written by D.Dew and A.Z. Katz. Vocals: D. Dew, C. Lipton and A.Z. Katz; Keyboards: A.Z. Katz
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