Musical Pathway Fellowship grad Damian Goggans explores new realm in classical guitar music

Not all that long ago, Damian Goggans picked up a guitar for the very first time, at the urging of a middle school teacher.  

Little could he have known that eight years later, after studying at CIM, he’d be what he is now, an accomplished performer ready to jolt his field with a groundbreaking recording project.  

“It’s mind-blowing,” says Academy guitar faculty Erik Mann, one of Goggans’ former teachers and still a friend and mentor. “He’s basically a quadruple threat.”  

The four talents Mann refers to are guitar playing, singing, research, and oration, all of which figure into Goggans’ new video project, which publishes on YouTube on March 26.  

Not only does Goggans perform 14 original and increasingly difficult etudes by Thomas Flippin. He also sings the African American Spirituals on which each one is based and explains some of the context in which the music was conceived.  

It’s a grand opening salvo in what is likely to be a long-term mission by Goggans to discover, perform, record, and catalog the music of Black classical guitarists. Currently, he has a list of 61.  

“There’s absolutely nothing like it in the repertoire, not even close,” Mann says of the Flippin etudes. “The guitar world has nothing like this.” 

CIM fits into this marvelous tale as the school that first nurtured Goggans. (He is now about to graduate from the Oberlin Conservatory.)  

Shortly after Mann discovered Goggans through an outreach program by the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, the young guitarist came to CIM as one of two students in the inaugural class of the Musical Pathway Fellowship program. 

There, in Mann’s studio, he progressed rapidly, augmenting his training with devout independent study. Before long, even as he dealt with a range of troubles at home, he found himself on stage with the Society’s international guests and receiving scholarship offers from prestigious universities. 

“Guitar gave me something to do, instead of what other people might have been doing,” said Goggans. “Without CIM, I don’t think I would have gotten this far. Because I had CIM, I was able to see that this was even possible. ” 

Early in his studies, Goggans asked Mann a simple but surprisingly profound question, one that is now changing the course of his life: Are there any other Black classical guitarists, and did any of them write classical music for guitar?  

Goggans doesn’t recall the answer, but whatever it was, he wasn’t satisfied. Deep down, he felt sure there were more – more, indeed, than he or anyone would ever know.  

Hence his current mission. The etudes he’s now sharing are the first of what will undoubtedly be many efforts to give voice to the voiceless, new life to those overlooked or forgotten.  

“It’s almost as if I’m speaking for my ancestors, like they’re speaking through me,” Goggans said. “I’m connecting to the history I’m trying to uncover.”