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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:09] Robert Bannon: Well, welcome to The Roundtable, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to us on Broadway World, the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart, Spotify, wherever artists are talking about art. I'm excited to talk to our next guests. They're going to have you dancing. They're going to have you talking about incredible music, and they're having a big old film festival premiere coming up this September 19th, right here in New York City. Please, I'm excited to have you both here. Frank, Benjamin, welcome to the show. Hey, how are you?

[0:34] Frank Pavich: I'm wondering, Frank, how did this come to you? It came to me from this guy. It came to me from Ben. Ben is the founder of something called the Academia de Bachata in the Dominican Republic, which is the world's only school to teach bachata music. He's the founder of the school, and he has this bachata-focused record label, and he's really dedicated his life to this. Then, one day, he said, oh, I should make a documentary about this. It would be really interesting. So a mutual friend connected us together, and Ben turned me on to this wild world of fantastic music and fascinating personalities. Off we went to shoot for many, many, many, many years.

[1:28] Robert Bannon: How many years, Frank?

[1:32] Frank Pavich: We shot for five, but I think that the whole process with the editing and everything was 10 years altogether.

[1:39] Robert Bannon: Amazing. Ben, Benjamin, when did you discover the love of bachata?

[1:47] Mártires de León: Well, the story starts, I guess, you have to choose a starting point. I was on the New York F train, and it opened at 14th Street. I heard this voice waving towards me, and so I got out to listen to who was singing, and there was this old-time Dominican man and really just fell in love with that music. I was just beginning to start to explore how to produce music, how to, in the old sense, record an album with a band. So I invited him over, and he brought with him a guitarist, Edilio Paredes, who's one of the fathers of bachata music, of that old-time bachata music. That was the beginning. I'd heard modern bachata, but I'd never heard this old-time bachata, and I fell in love with it. Edilio and I worked on that project, and then we ended up working together on a series of projects with different singers. Then I went and continued working with Dominican artists, and eventually that led me to beginning to founding this school, Academia de Bachata.

[3:12] Frank Pavich: Unprofessional, Frank and Benjamin. You know, that's the only place where you can study it. So you have some pretty fancy, dancy musicians and people who tour around the world that tour with people who sell out stadiums. If you like Romeo Santos, that's bachata. You know, that kind of music. So where do people come from? What is the story of the people who study this with you? Are they just from DR? Are they around the world? What is your student population like?

[3:39] Mártires de León: The school, first of all, is open to anybody, any kid who wants to come. It's free. And the vast majority are kids from this neighborhood of Cabaret, which is where the locals live in Cabaret, and some of the surrounding communities. So they're mostly local Dominican and Haitian kids that live in the area. But, you know, we even have, sometimes there's expatriates that live there, and they want to send their kids. So, you know, we have this little blonde girl studying in the school right now, you know, together with everybody else. So that's part of the spirit, is of inclusion. Anybody who wants to come and learn this music is welcome. That's my little blonde daughter there to learn some good music.

[4:31] Robert Bannon: So Frank, what is the storytelling? Like, I always find documentaries fascinating because you don't necessarily know the beginning, middle, and end. You're going to start and see where the journey unfolds. So what unfolded? What can we expect to see when we watch this?

[4:43] Frank Pavich: Well, I mean, there's a type of documentary which is about something that happened in the past, you know, where you know basically, okay, the beginning, middle, and end, what happened, and maybe you'll be surprised along the way in making the film. But this is a style of documentary, this is a verite documentary. So we basically, we focus on four kids who attend the school, and it's really about, it's about them, really. And it's about their lives, and it's about their relationships in school, and their home lives, and how this music has entered their lives, and how they have learned to basically express themselves through this musical education which they've been given. But it really focuses on four kids, on three boys and a girl, as well as the, it also heavily focuses on the main guitar teacher in the school who's sort of like, he's obviously a mentor to them, but he's also kind of like a parental figure.

And it's just really about, I think the original idea was that it would be, you know, heavily focused on the school, but it really kind of became more about these kids, and their personalities, and their lives, which really just about, and it's something that I think is universal. You know, the things that these kids are going through are the same things that we all went through when we were growing up, and maybe there are things that we're still going through. I know I learned a lot, you know, from these little kids, go figure. But they're incredibly deep, and they can express themselves in truly miraculous and beautiful ways. So, it was a really fascinating opportunity to spend so much time with them, to really watch them grow up.

Because, you know, when you shoot a film over five years about kids, you're really seeing them grow. You know, if you're making a film about adults over five years, we don't change that much. But kids really change. You know, they change physically, they change emotionally, their intelligence grows. They're, in this case, with the school, you know, they're musicians, so their musical talents grow. And it's just a fascinating thing to kind of grab onto and watch.

[7:10] Robert Bannon: I love that. You know, I'm a teacher, and teaching musical theater in my lifetime, and then teaching English has changed, going to learn music changed my life. It's a lifeline, Benjamin, to kids, when they need to find connection, they need to find and learning music connects to all the other things and skills we need. So for you, Benjamin, what is the payoff? What's the draw? What is it that keeps you going to keep this school going? When you see those kids? What is the what's the prize at the end of the race?

[7:37] Mártires de León: Well, I think I mean, for me, the school is a kind of experiment. And my idea was, was, I wanted to see, to create a musical community for children. And just to see like, how far that could go, like where, you know, what kind of musical person could emerge from that just being, you know, from a young age being saturated in music. So now we have a preschool program. So there, some are starting as young as three years old. And, you know, like, I think that there's so much potential in every human being, you know, and the child that's born has it all. And then it's how, how do we, as adults shape the world around them to so that they can realize different potentials. And what I and you know, we're, I'm not saying this, the Bachata Academy is far from a perfect school, we're learning as we go along, how to kind of make it better for these kids.

And we still have a long way to go. But what I hope is that we can do something that's, that's good and different, that can be an inspiration, you know, not only for serving this community, but can be inspiration to others about what they could do in their communities. And part of the idea for this film is to show is to document and show, you know, what's going on and inspire others to invest in their children musically.

[9:15] Robert Bannon: It's incredible. So Frank, how can we see it? How can we support it? And why should we see it? If we're not into dancing, if we've never danced a Latin dance, we've never picked up a guitar or sung a song? What should why is this for everybody?

[9:30] Frank Pavich: Because it's universal experiences, you know, it's, it's, it's, we can all relate to everything that these kids are going through. We all, you know, we were all kids, we all grew up with our own troubles, and our own good and bad experiences, just like these kids. And it's, it's, it's an amazing, I think it's a really amazing and worthwhile experience to take that, you know, hour and a half, hour and 40 minutes and sit down and watch this film. And I think you will, I think people that view it really, they come out of it different. You know, I think that that's like a success for a film to me is it changes the viewer. Like if you go in to watch a film, and you walk out of the theater the same, why did you spend your time doing that?

But I think that this is something that you walk out of it and you're, you're transformed, you're a different person, because you're getting to hold on to these kids and watch their experiences. And I think that that's a really valuable and rare experience. I mean, these kids were very, they're all very natural, you know, they were not aware of the cameras, they didn't care, they weren't, you know, looking to be on camera or the reverse, they weren't looking to get away from the cameras, they were just, it didn't even register to them, they were just themselves, which is rare, which is a really hard thing to find people like that. But every kid that we, and adults, everybody that we filmed with there, they just didn't care that we were there. And it was just, they just lived their lives, and we were just there to document it, which was a great opportunity.

[11:27] Robert Bannon: So, so incredible. Go see this in New York City, everybody. Everybody's got to see it. What's the plan after this weekend, Frank, do we have a plan? Is that we're gonna have a chance to see it?

[11:35] Frank Pavich: This is Ben's department. I'm gonna let Ben take the lead on this.

[11:41] Mártires de León: Well, he's a producer too, everybody, producer. So the film's going through the festival circuit. It's going to be showing in Montreal as part of a festival called Pop Montreal in November. It's going to be at the Vancouver International Film Festival in October. And then in November, it's going to be at, in Barcelona and Bordeaux. And, you know, hopefully it'll, that'll just continue. Actually, it'll be also, let me not leave this out, this is very important. In September, it'll also be showing in Ghana as part of the Black Star International Film Festival, which, you know, with the connection between music of the Caribbean and music of West Africa, that's a really interesting place for the film. And, you know, hopefully it'll be on some kind of streaming service or, and also maybe with some theater run. You know, obviously both Frank and I would like this film to be seen as much as possible. So that's the goal.

[12:48] Robert Bannon: Super exciting. Congratulations to you both. I wish you nothing but the best. The link to find the website and information on how to follow the film will be below. So if you're listening to us or watching it, make sure you click it and get all the information you can and go support this. Congratulations to you both. And as one educator to others and one artist to others, thank you for what you do. What you do is incredible. It changes the world every single day. So it was a pleasure to spend some time with you.

[13:10] Frank Pavich: Thanks so much, Robert. It was a real pleasure.

[13:12] Mártires de León: Thank you, Robert.