PART 7

Finding Music Where You Least Expect It

Α.
I remember gazing out the window of the bus as it weaved its way through the streets of Rio de Janeiro and catching a glimpse every now and then of the foot of a towering hill at the end of a side street just off the main bus route. I saw lush vegetation creeping all the way down and around the city’s high-rises, and nestled amidst this tropical jungle, scaling the hillsides, Rio’s notorious favelas, or slums. Many of those I had met in the relatively wealthy areas of the city seemed uninterested in or even dismissive of the problems faced by the inhabitants of the favelas. Couldn’t they see that their apathetic urban core was being encroached upon, inch by inch by twin forces: the jungle and poverty?

Β.
Rio is not alone in this, although its favelas are perhaps among the best known examples of the ignominious realities of poverty around the world. Many, if not all, Latin American mega-cities are surrounded by these sprawling shanty towns built with little more than salvaged tin, scrap wood and sheets of corrugated iron. And in these settlements, steeped in squalor and infested with crime, the poor are, for the most part, trapped, left to fend for themselves with very few opportunities to escape to a better future for themselves or their children. Though known by different names across the continent (favelas, barrios, villas miserias, ba ados, or cerros), all share some common characteristics, and outsiders inevitably tend to focus on the more obvious and less palatable ones, such as the grip of drugs and crime on these communities. Accounts of the vibrant cultures they foster in the face of the most abject conditions, cultures to which music, for instance, is central, often fall through the cracks. The average European may be dimly aware of the sound of salsa which provides a constant backing track to life in the barrio. Imagine his surprise, however, if he were to hear not salsa, but a few bars of Beethoven instead.

C.
Since the mid-1970s, when Venezuelan orchestra conductor, pianist, social activist and politician José Antonio Abreu founded the country’s National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras, known today simply as El Sistema, many South American slums have become an unlikely hothouse for classical music talent. A tradition has developed, recently exported to the USA and Europe, of using classical music education to battle the effects of poverty. Both Abreu and star conductor Gustavo Dudamel, himself a product of El Sistema and now music director of the prestigious Los Angeles Philharmonic, perceive music as a “social saviour”. It is worth noting that “Play and Fight!” was El Sistema’s early slogan. More than two million children have tried fighting poverty-induced despair and resignation through classical music training with El Sistema, and many of them have gone on to create a better life for themselves.

D.
There is, however, an even more impressive example of how classical music has been used as a social remedy: opening up new possibilities and transforming lives by granting them a modicum of beauty. The Cateura landfill, on the outskirts of Asunci n, in Paraguay, is a potential source of income (albeit a pathetically small income) for the inhabitants of the surrounding ba ados, who scrape a living by working in the landfill, picking through the rubbish for any reusable items or materials which they can sell. Thanks to the vision of a landfill technician and conductor, and the craftsmanship of a local carpenter, Cateura is now known for its symphony orchestra, granted one that uses cellos made from oil drums and violins made from discarded oven trays. The Recycled Orchestra of Cateura consists of 30 schoolchildren who play their classical repertoire on these instruments made from repurposed rubbish and, although their music may lack the rich tones of, say, their more conventional Venezuelan counterpart, it illustrates beautifully how harmony and meaning is a matter of choice, not circumstance.

E.
For a tourist on a bus ride across any Latin American metropolis, living conditions in the slums can be shocking and, it is true that we should be appalled by the persistence of such abject poverty in this day and age. Nevertheless, without falling into the other trap that tourists are susceptible to – that of romanticising life in the colourful barrio – it is worth bearing in mind the stories of these improbable symphony orchestras. They certainly made my vision of life in the poorest neighbourhoods a little richer, more nuanced and, for this, more realistic.