These 3 amazing companies are collectively donating 35 guitars for our recently announced pilot music program in conjunction with Passim School of Music and Prospect Hill Academy.

“Working with brands of this caliber ensures that our students will receive high quality instruments to begin their musical training.” says Jonathan Jacobs, founder and Executive Director of Rawkstars, Inc.  “It helps us direct additional support to other aspects of this program, since a majority of our equipment costs are being covered by this in-kind donation.”

“We are proud to be working with such generous and recognizable businesses to bring opportunity through music education to 60+ local youth, right here in our own backyard.”

For more information on Rawkstars, Inc. contact us directly at info@rawkstars.org/617.750.0775 or visit our website, http://rawkstars.org.

Club Passim is one of the nation’s legendary cultural icons and epicenter of great folk and acoustic music.  The venue’s 50+ year role in America’s musical and cultural history is still being assessed in books, recordings, documentaries, articles, and music biographies.

Prospect Hill is a 14 year old Charter School based in Cambridge and Somerville, serving 900 students grades K-12 across three campuses.

Rawkstars will be providing 40 instruments and musical accessories to the pilot as well as working on operational, analytic and marketing efforts to support the students, instructors and its partners.

“We are extremely excited to be working with such luminary partners”, says Jonathan Jacobs, founder and Executive Director of Rawkstars.  “This collaboration represents a major step in Rawkstars’ growth and in its mission to provide opportunity to Boston area kids through music programs.”

The pilot program begins in September 2010 and will run throughout the 2010-11 school year.  It will include 4 groups of students encompassing kindergarten through 8th grade.  Younger kids will work towards learing basic musical rhythms and hand drumming while older students will begin learning guitar through a highly supervised curriculum.

For more information, contact us at 617.750.0775 or via email, jjacobs@rawkstars.org.

The diminutive slayer of dragons is without question one of the most revered, influential, successful and talented singers to ever grace a stage.

For me it started in 1982 when Holy Diver was released.  By that time, Dio had already secured his musical legacy by playing with two of the biggest names in music; Black Sabbath and Rainbow, but for a 12 year old suburban, middle class kid, those were unknown quantities to me as of yet.

I walked to the local record store and thumbed through the tiny *heavy metal* section.  Before the internet, file sharing and global socialization, that’s the main way I found new music.  I either had a friend give me a homemade cassette of the latest cool band from Europe, read about them in Kerrang or bought albums randomly by deciding who had the coolest looking cover.  Holy Diver featured a chained priest being thrown into the ocean by a towering, muscle-bound demon.  Sold.  It was a non-scientific method of finding new music and sometimes yielded sketchy results.  This wasn’t to be one of those times.

I got the record home and dropped the needle.  After the first few revolutions of static that always built anticipation for what was coming, it started.  The title track kicked in and I was hooked.  I can picture myself instinctively banging my head to that riff and raising the devil horns Dio also popularized, in classic Beavis and Butthead-style.  I probably listened to the record 5 consecutive times that day, and 500+ times over the coming year.  Not because of that album cover, but because of the music inside.

That’s the thing about Dio; he meticulously crafted an image of himself to appeal to young fans and to deliver the style of lyrics and imagery he so clearly loved.  But his music had SUBSTANCE.  He knew how to put a band together and how to be a front man.  He knew how to write timeless melodies and could sing like the angels and devils portrayed in his songwriting.  He affected me not only with those first songs, but sent me on a journey that took me into the teeth of the music I was just starting to discover fall in love with.

I immediately went out and bought Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules.  Then Rainbow Rising, Long Live Rock N’ Roll and Rainbow’s first album.  Over the ensuing months and years, those grew to be some of the most influential albums on me, even eclipsing his solo work in the pantheon of my musical catalog.  It led me directly into the incestuous family tree that was Rainbow, Deep Purple, Sabbath, Whitesnake and Ozzy; which each in turn sprouted branches of their own.  Like a great history lesson, music can send you on a journey of discovery, in search of the essence of what you have learned to see how it came to be.  Dio sent many of us on that path and left us hungry for more at every turn.

Dio was a connector.  More than just a link; he was a guide who took me on a pilgrimage back through the history of rock and metal music that defined a large part of who I am as a human being.

“Something’s calling me back.  There’s a light in the black.
Am I ready to go?  …I’m coming home!”