When Nacogdoches ISD provided funds to replace aging instruments for the district’s wildly successful band program, a number of the baritones, French horns and saxophones dated as far back as the 1950s.
“The school had used those for a long, long time,” said NHS Band Director Jacob Weems.
And while the district was ready to begin phasing out instruments that had been played by generations of Nacogdoches students, those same horns and woodwinds are still making music, in many cases halfway round the world.
Guillermo Cano, whose wife Carmen is a translator with the school district, was touring the high school early last year with Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Trujillo’s Leadership NISD class. While visiting the band hall at NHS, Cano learned from Weems the district was in the process of replacing many of its instruments.
Cano (left) shown with Dr. Gabriel Trujillo
“[Weems] said he would retire some instruments, and that’s how I ended up with them,” Cano said.
Cano works with Nacogdoches Gospel Assembly and for years has been part of a group that supports churches and ministries around the world, including Central American countries like Guatemala, and in South America, Argentina and Chilé.
Cano’s efforts are not just limited to the western hemisphere. The group is able to obtain musical instruments from a number of sources, including NISD, and some of those have (or soon will) make their way to Africa and India.
“Guillermo found a second life for all those instruments,” said NISD Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Trujillo. “And those instruments are now being played in Central America and the Caribbean and across the world.”
Later this year, a group will be taking instruments from the states to India. Another group, including Cano himself, are making a trip to the Philippines.
A second round of donated instruments came from NISD after the NHS band hall was inundated with water on Christmas Eve of 2022. A pipe in the ceiling that froze during an outbreak of bitterly cold weather burst, soaking instruments, walls, the floor, lockers, just about everything in the band hall, Weems said. (In fact, only in the past few weeks has all the repair work been completed.)
Within no time, band instruments that sat in water were covered by a milky white mold. “We couldn’t in good faith let students use these instruments,” Weems said.
Those damaged by water were replaced, with the help of the district’s insurance. And while no one would want to play the damaged instruments, they could be scavenged for parts in some cases, so another set went to Cano’s mission.
“Getting parts for instruments can be difficult,” said Weems.
Taking the instruments off the hands of the NHS band program helped with storage, particularly with those damaged by water. They were removed from the band hall but had been kept elsewhere on campus and Cano and his group brought a truck to load up everything.
Now the instruments, as well as those salvaged for parts, are still being used by students, just in parts of the world far from Nacogdoches, Cano said.
“Those instruments have been key to our mission,” said Cano.