In a historic home in Northeast Kansas City, about a dozen teens gather in a wood-panelled room, a vintage chandelier hanging overhead. They all attend different schools in the Kansas City area, and meet in this house after school once a week.
Among them is 18-year-old Josue Aguero, who has been coming since he was a sophomore. All these young men and women are gifted songwriters, and now part of the Rebel Song Academy, a program that helps them deal with social and emotional challenges, as well as learn how to write and perform their own music.
“Throughout the years, it's varied,” said Aguero. “I'm in an era right now where I know my taste. So I do alternative pop.”
Aguero’s last music school suggested Rebel Song Academy (RSA) would be a good fit for him. The beginning of high school was tough — Aguero didn’t have people he was close to or who shared his love of music. He had a lot of social anxiety.
“I was very alone before I joined RSA,” he said. “I didn't really have a third place. I didn't really have mentors, or what I really needed for my future.”
Years later, he said, he is in a much better mindset. He no longer feels alone. He’s found a group with similar interests — and similar struggles.
“When I joined RSA, it filled that gap that I needed in my social life,” said Aguero.
Rebel Song Academy opened in 2017 under the local nonprofit Arts as Mentorship. By visiting schools and community centers, instructors recruit adolescents who are dealing with mental health issues and are also interested in music.
Teaching them about pitch, harmony and melody, and structuring a song, the students compose, collaborate and perform for one another. They are encouraged to share their personal stories through their music. One of the goals is to alleviate anxiety, depression and other social and emotional challenges by collectively making music.
A generation of trauma
A 2025 UNICEF study of 5,600 individuals around the world aged 14 to 25 discovered that four out of 10 from Generation Z felt overwhelmed by world crises and that there was a stigma attached to mental health issues in school or workplace settings. Only half of the study participants knew where to get resources and treatment for their mental health.
Art therapist Sherri Jacobs consults with Rebel Song Academy. She says there is an enormous need among this demographic.
“This current generation of teenagers is facing probably one of the most complicated times in human history for many factors,” Jacobs said.
Besides being a full-time therapist, Jacobs assists RSA music instructors as they design a curriculum that integrates mental health principles.
“Cell phone introduction and the use of social media, that's sort of a Wild West," Jacobs said. "And the complications of the pandemic impacting that particular generation, we're still sort of untangling ourselves from that.”
Students who participate in Rebel Song Academy find like-minded peers they can identify with, and who can relate to their stories in this open and judgment-free space.
Healing powers
Over the 12-week course, the different modules dive into song structure, chord progression, harmony, and melody. Over 1200 students have gone through the program.
27- year-old Brandon Yangmi was a graduate of RSA’s first class. Today, he's the program director. He says he came to Rebel Song from a dark place in his senior year.
“When I got introduced to the Rebel Song Academy, I was still in that space of depression and anxiety,” Yangmi said. “I would have been 18 or 19 years old. I walked into a room and then saw a room of students, teenagers my age, playing music and being vulnerable just in performance.”
Yangmi also serves as one of four instructors in RSA’s class sessions. Each Thursday night, he and his team rotate from the whiteboard to the piano bench, roaming into small rooms where an individual or group of students are mastering their musical projects.
Yangmi says songwriting has healing powers.
“You're able to maybe tackle subjects or share things in your life that you might not feel comfortable doing in normal conversation," Yangmi said. "Through the vehicle of music, you can approach stuff and talk about those subjects in a different way that might feel easier for you.”
Yangmi said taking the first step is sometimes the hardest.
“Just performing in front of other people is difficult,” he said. “Some people (are) tackling some really heavy subjects, and seeing a room of people celebrate that was huge.”
On Finding Calm
Rebel Song Academy instructors says there is data that reinforces their experience.
In 2023, five students volunteered to have an electroencephalogram, or EEG, at the beginning and end of the program. The EEG measures activity in different parts of the brain.
Jon Tyler Mark, a neurofeedback practitioner, works out of an office in Independence, Missouri, and uses EEG to measure brain activity during meditation sessions.
At the start, the five kids had high brain activity in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, the parts that deal with memory.
“A lot of these kids experience hypervigilance in their communities where they live," Mark said. "Their pattern matching is hyperactive. Because they're, you know, they maybe aren't at rest while they sit at rest.”
At the end of the term, Mark said the students showed an average of 24% decrease in activity in those parts of the brain, suggesting a decrease in their levels of anxiety. Mark said it’s impossible to know exactly what caused the drop. He hopes to retest some of the students and expand the study later this year.
“Start to have controls and see if getting together in a group, if just being together makes these incredible changes to the nervous system, or whether it requires the songwriting aspect," Mark said.
Back at Rebel Song Academy, the students have broken up into small groups, composing songs from scratch. Some use their voice. Others, like Josua Aguero, are on a guitar. Aguero says he’s a different person than when he began at Rebel Song Academy.
“I know my worth, and I know my value,” he said.
Not only that, but he now has a group of trusted friends and fellow musicians to perform with.
“And the people who are on stage with me, they deserve to be on stage with me.”
