Everyone knows music brings people together – but in Venezuela, hundreds of thousands of children are joining a classical music program which offers them all a chance to escape from poverty.
Everyone knows music brings people together – but in Venezuela, hundreds of thousands of children are joining a classical music program which offers them all a chance to escape from poverty.
In 1975, Dr. José Antonio Abreu decided that the povery-mired children of Venezuela needed a new social framework to help get themselves on their feet – and that it should be built around classical music. Today, el Sistema (or, fully, the National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela) is made up of over 800 ensembles, orchestras and choirs across the country, and an estimated 800,000 children have followed the program in the last three decades.
As reported by 60 Minutes, participants fit in their music sessions after the normal school day and often get involved at weekends. It’s a level of commitment that Dr. Abreu believes to be beneficial to all, not just those intending to follow music as a career. “Music produces an irreversible transformation in a child. This doesn’t mean he’ll end up as a professional musician,” he said. “He may become a doctor, or study law, or teach literature. What music gives him remains indelibly part of who he is forever.”
Why classical music? Branch leader Raphael Elster believes this is because popular music is often associated with the negative contemporary influences el Sistema struggles to lift its children away from – poverty, crime, neglect. Classical music’s power in Venezuela is its otherworldly escapism.
The program’s $80 million annual budget comes mostly from the Venezuelan government, supported by a $150 million loan in 2007 from the Inter-American Development Bank. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is happy to associate himself with it, going as far as to announce in September 2007 a new government initiative, Misión Música, designed to provide instruments and support teaching. Further welcome publicity has come in the form of a film documentary, Tocar Y Luchar (“to play and to struggle”).
It’s a long way from that first night in 1975 that Dr. Abreu held rehearsals for just 11 children – but even then he “had the feeling that this was the beginning of something very big.” With el Sistema enjoying government support, helping thousands to better themselves and providing a training-ground for the National Youth Orchestra, you don’t get much bigger.
Let the music play on.