‘Sound of hope — Landfill Harmonic and El Siestema

Working with children has taught me a number of lessons. Most of these lessons are about how little I know. One of the most enduring lessons has been the idea of using the simplest everyday objects in multiple ways, that would baffle the most creative mind.

In this context, it has been my dream to create an orchestra of instruments using entirely recyclable waste material. As an idea, this has taken shape in some of the schools I work with, but its original inspiration comes from the ‘Landfill Harmonic.’ Started in Paraguay in one of the poorest neighbourhoods (the Cateura Landfill), this brainchild of engineer-turned-music teacher and activist Favio Chavez has seen a huge social revolution take place in just the last decade.

Starting with the need to prevent children from playing in the landfill and contracting danger or disease, he and associate Nicolas Cola started by getting old tin cans, tubes and metal parts from the landfill reshaped into cellos, violins and drum kits. This movement has since grown, and nearly 200 children are part of the “Landfill Harmonic, playing to sold out concert halls the world over. The music produced by the children who play these instruments is beautiful, actually divine. I have talked before in this column of the purity of music produced by children in these circumstances.

This led me to studying the work of Jose Antonio Abreu and the incredible work he has done with El Sistema. Started in 1975, the work of this visionary was to encourage orchestral music education as a means to providing “real education” and “real life change” for thousands of children living in some of the most impoverished circumstances in Venezuela. In his words, “[music] has to be recognised as an agent of social development, in the highest sense because it transmits the highest values – solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community, and to express sublime feelings.”

El Sistema has since been carried out as a practice throughout the globe. In its native South America, it is now being practiced by nearly 750,000 children. The brightest star to emerge from among the poorest neighbourhoods in Caracas is Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, whose life drastically transformed due to the work of Abreu.

Online orchestra

In 2011, YouTube created a sensation by getting people to audition through YouTube for the world’s first ever online collaborative orchestral performance. With millions of entries pouring in, the finalists were invited to play at Carnegie Hall with a live feed on the portal. It was the first time that a live orchestral performance was viewed by over 30 million people.

The world is moving in strange ways. But to quote Eli Broad, “civilizations aren’t remembered by their business people, bankers or lawyers. They’re remembered by their arts.”

It is high time that we realised that bringing humanity together is perhaps the biggest lesson in music.

The writer is a well known pianist and music educator based in Chennai