Ahiled eyes a bowl of magenta hair dye on the table in front of her. The chemical smells of detergent and hair dye fill the air of the Rogers Park laundry room she and her friends have turned into a makeshift beauty salon.
The Venezuelan teenager was hoping for a deep purple in honor of Olivia Rodrigo, her favorite singer. Purple is the pop star’s signature color, and this raspberry hue is all wrong.
But Ahiled doesn’t have time to pivot. In less than 24 hours, she’ll sing for the first time in front of the students at her new American high school.
Ahiled enrolled at Sullivan High School last year, among an early wave of migrant students. Now, the Rogers Park high school, which has long been a front door for refugees and immigrants, has more than 70 Venezuelan migrants. Many live in city shelters, speak little English and missed months — sometimes years — of school while fleeing their home country and making the journey to the United States.
“It’s so hard to leave your home and your culture,” the 18-year-old senior says. “I really miss my country.”
At Sullivan, though, Ahiled and her Venezuelan classmates say they can just be high school kids. They flirt and tease. They record TikTok dances. And they take American traditions like a fall concert and imbue it with sounds of Venezuela as a way to connect their old lives with their new ones.
With the concert a day away, Ahiled looks at the bowl of dye as her friend swirls the bright-colored mixture. She runs her fingers across her long, curly, brown hair and moans.
“That is not the color on the box,” she says. “It was supposed to be purple, and it’s pink.”
A friend takes a section of Ahiled’s hair and swipes on the first coat of dye. There’s no turning back now.
In the key of Olivia Rodrigo
One of the first people Ahiled met at Sullivan was social worker Josh Zepeda. They bonded over music. Zepeda, who moonlights as a DJ and musician, urged Ahiled to join the school rock band and encouraged other Venezuelan students, including her friends Luis and Antony, to get involved, too.
The two also connected through talk therapy, which Ahiled found so powerful that she now hopes to pursue a college degree in social work.
WBEZ agreed to withhold the students’ last names due to the precarious nature of their immigration status.
In harder moments, Ahiled also listens to Olivia Rodrigo — the high school senior calls her Olivia — to buoy herself. Lately, she’s been playing the bittersweet “Teenage Dream” a lot.
They all say that it gets better
It gets better the more you grow
Yeah, they all say that it gets better
It gets better, but what if I don’t?
“The song talks about when you’re growing up and how everyone tells you, hey, you need to enjoy your life,” Ahiled says. “But you don’t always feel like you’re enjoying your life.”
She imagines that those lines resonate with a lot of high-schoolers. This fall, the number of newly enrolled English learners in the Chicago Public Schools more than doubled over previous years.
When more migrant students began arriving, Zepeda enlisted Ahiled as a student guide to help introduce new students to the rhythms of an American high school. That included everything from showing newcomers the cafeteria to helping collect winter coats and boots to serving as a translator and offering an ear when they feel overwhelmed: “The advice I always tell them is to just try to do the best because we are here, and we are representing Venezuela.”
Venezuela has a strong musical tradition that includes El Sistema — the system, a national training program to help young people escape poverty through music education. El Sistema, which was started in 1975 and was championed by former President Hugo Chávez, trained thousands of students and counts Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel among its alumni.
In Chicago, Zepeda also uses music to help students feel at home. And a Latinx heritage concert was a fitting opportunity.
“Having cultural-themed assemblies is a great way to get migrant youth involved in school,” Zepeda says. “It makes people feel like they are a part of something.”
Ahiled was one of the first students to volunteer to perform at the school show.
“Singing, for me, is how I tell my story,” she says.
She recruited Luis and Antony, and they chose to mash up the pop hit “No Se Va” by the popular Colombian group Morat and the 2010 song “Mi Niña Bonita” by the Venezuelan band Chino & Nacho.
“We chose these songs because Venezuelans are always getting over obstacles,” Ahiled says. “We’re showing that, no matter what happens to us, we’re happy to be here.”
For Luis, 17, a junior who sings with Ahiled in the mash-up, the performance connects him to a family tradition.
“Music is something that’s been passed down from one generation to another in my family,” Luis says in Spanish as Zepeda translates. “I started singing when I was 4 years old.”
Luis’s earliest memories include singing with his grandfather, a well-known performer of llaneras, traditional Venezuelan folk songs. Luis remembers the first song his grandfather taught him, about a father who gives his son a horse. Llanera songs are rarely transcribed, but Luis can recite this one by memory.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget that song,” he says.
Luis says the group considered singing a more traditional song but settled on two they felt would best connect with their classmates. That’s also why they asked 17-year-old Antony, who’s also Venezuelan, to rap a verse.
“Anyone who is going through what we’re going through I just want to wish them the best,” Antony says.
“These kids are unbelievable,” Zepeda says. “Once they get settled in, they start asking: How can I help the next kid who’s coming here? And that is something that has just floored me and amazed me.”
Venezuela takes the stage
The big day finally arrives. The assembly is set to begin in an hour. Zepeda bounces around the room, checking sound levels, adjusting microphones, finalizing music cues. The stage has been transformed into a tapestry of flags.
A little after 2 p.m., hundreds of students start to filter in. As the show’s emcee, Ahiled introduces a parade of acts, until it’s her band’s moment. She takes the mic center stage, and Zepeda picks the first few notes of No Se Va on guitar. Softly, Ahiled starts singing along, her voice barely audible over the din of the room. After a few seconds, Luis joins in, and his sweet, clear voice seems to surprise the crowd, which cheers and whistles.
The two turn toward one another as they sing.
There’s a pause in the music, and they move on to Mi Niña Bonita.
Antony comes on stage wrapped in the Venezuelan flag. That draws cheers. As he raps, he unfurls the flag and holds it up for the crowd.
Ahiled grabs a corner, and the two wave it back and forth across the stage, a message of resilience and hope shared with an audience representing more than 30 countries.
Later, after school, Ahiled huddles outside with her friends. Still buzzing from the performance, she says one moment felt particularly special. It was at the end of Mi Niña Bonita, when she looked out and saw students in the balcony waving the Venezuelan flag.
“It was beautiful,” she says. “I didn’t expect that someone else would have a flag. It felt a little like home because I had my friends and a little bit of my culture.”
Ahiled says she felt inspired. She planned to spend some of the weekend writing her own music — maybe even about the teenage dream, one in which it really does start to get better.
