How Venezuela's Classical Music Program is Changing Young Lives--in the U.S.A.

[Peace Patriot]

Mozart vs. the Gangstas: How Classical Music Is Changing Young Lives

By JENS ERIK GOULD , TIME US. , January 8th 2012

Gangs are such a part of life in southeastern Los Angeles that Daniel Gonzalez once thought he was destined to be wrapped up in them sooner or later. The omens were everywhere. He had friends die after they were stabbed in a racially motivated fight. Almost every day, he hears gunshots and police sirens around the neighborhood. "Of course it scared me," says Daniel, 17, whose parents are Guatemalan and Salvadoran. "I would never want to live that life." But something rescued him from that nightmare: classical music.

At age 12, Daniel began taking classes at the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, a program run by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the nonprofit group Harmony Project and the city's EXPO Center. Now he's a French-horn player who has performed onstage at the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall with the likes of Stevie Wonder. He says the program gave him structure and a love for music that have helped him get on the right path in life. He had a short internship in the offices of the L.A. Philharmonic and is now applying for college scholarships with a goal to become a family doctor. "When I came here, it just felt like a relief, like a sanctuary," Daniel says. "This program has really changed lives, because it gives kids something to do instead of getting into trouble."

The initiative — called YOLA for short — was inspired by a Venezuelan program known as El Sistema, which has taught classical music to hundreds of thousands of underprivileged children for more than three decades. El Sistema's most famous product is L.A. Phil director Gustavo Dudamel. When the Venezuelan took over the orchestra in 2009, he began to replicate El Sistema and got the L.A. Phil to invest in YOLA. The program now offers instruction as often as four days a week to some 500 underprivileged kids (most of them Latino or African American) in underserved areas of the city. Children who want to learn to play classical music usually have to pay a lot of money for lessons and instruments; YOLA provides both for free. Recently, the L.A. Phil announced a new project called Take a Stand that will set up a master's program to educate instructors on the El Sistema model for teaching kids.

I first visited the El Sistema program six years ago, when I was a reporter in Caracas. At concerts, teenagers glowed about the performances of certain pianists or violinists in the same way American children might be passionate about a rock band or a football superstar. Kids from poor backgrounds were able to use music to direct themselves toward greater opportunities. I remember meeting one young musician who by age 17 had been to correctional facilities nine times for drug use and armed robbery. With the help of El Sistema, within six years he was earning a living at a music institute and had played a dozen times at Venezuela's most famed concert hall. He was even studying to perform Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

Visiting YOLA, I was curious to see whether the successes in Caracas could be replicated in the U.S. The Los Angeles program is in its infancy, and there have been challenges tailoring the Venezuelan model to the U.S. While efforts to mirror El Sistema have also sprouted up in other cities across the U.S., the program is easier to implement in Venezuela because it is financed by the government and decisions are made by a central administration. In contrast, the New England Conservatory said in 2011 it wouldn't fund the expansion of a nascent program called El Sistema USA.

But there are positive similarities to the Venezuelan program. The sounds of clarinet, flute and trumpet classes floated through the halls of one of the program's two main centers. Children learning the flute practiced their posture and B-flat-major scales, while clarinet students rehearsed parts of Rossini's Barber of Seville. In an upstairs office, a few advanced students talked with teachers about their game plan for an upcoming performance of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik at a local talent show. One of those students, a 13-year-old flautist named Malonie Penn, told me with a smile that she listens to Mahler's Symphony No. 1 at home even though her parents don't care for it.

The program teaches children not just music but also responsibility and how to be models in their community. In a hallway, Maria Morales and Josefina Martinez, both natives of Mexico, waited for their children to finish class. Morales said that instead of hanging out on the streets or becoming pregnant at an early age — which she said many girls in the neighborhood risk doing — her 13-year-old daughter Kasandra wants to grow up to be like her cello teacher. Music class also helped teach Kasandra the discipline she needed to overcome difficulties she was having with math class in school. "She has models to follow," Morales told me. "The teachers have been a big support for her in her adolescence." Martinez chimed in, saying the program helps keeps kids away from the violence in the area. "There are gangs where we live," said Martinez, whose 11-year-old son plays clarinet. "So now our children can make friends with kids who are musicians and not street kids."

Word of the program is spreading so fast that staff can't keep up with the demand. As I spoke with program manager Paloma Ramos, a mother arrived to inquire about her daughter's joining the program for violin instruction, and Ramos told her new applicants were being put on a waiting list. After the woman left, Ramos pointed to an empty file folder and said it had held a thick stack of applications only days ago. Demand is high partly because YOLA offers what many public schools can't — amid budget cuts, many don't have programs to teach string instruments, and those that do usually won't offer more exotic instruments like double basses or double reeds. YOLA is also sought after because children find a caring staff that offers moral support and helps kids traverse the turbulent teenage years. Ramos, for example, not only helps students flourish as musicians but also gives them feedback on the essays they write for their college applications. That's a huge asset, especially for children who come from broken homes. "This type of prolonged contact with the program allows us to help them become not only good musicians but good human beings," says Ramos, who is also a violinist.

Of course, another huge plus for the students is that some of them get to play with Dudamel. Sharing a stage with the passionate Venezuelan would be a huge honor for any musician. He's had praise lavished on him by the most legendary of conductors, and he's largely considered the hottest ticket in all of classical music right now. But these kids don't boast. I asked Penn the flautist what it was like to play with him. "Cool," she said shyly. "He's a cool conductor."

(original) http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2103335,00.html
(found at) http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6729
(Creative Commons License)
(my emphases)

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Time magazine article, of course, doesn't mention of the chief organizing principle of El Sistema--Venezuela's astonishing, government-funded classical music program for poor children: unselfish collective effort. The "discipline" and "responsibility" that the Time article mentions comes from the joys of the intricate, total cooperation, friendship, and mutual aid, in making something beautiful, that orchestral music requires. That is the philosophy of the school. Time, of course, points out that Venezuela's (socialist) music program has a superstar--Gustav Dudamel--a musical genius who came up through El Sistema and is now the chief conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic. Dudamel has certainly helped the program that made him and strongly believes in it. But superstarism is NOT what this program is about--rather its opposite, self-sacrifice and group effort--as Dudamel himself would point out (and has pointed out in interviews).

Everybody helps everybody else. Students teach each other, in their mutual endeavor of making something beautiful. Expertise is not given A+ or gold stars--it is shared. No one is singled out over their individual success or failure. The educational effort is collective and cooperative. This is inherent in orchestral music. El Sistema takes this inherent nature of the music and turns it into an educational philosophy.

Time, Ayn Rand-like, stresses individual success--a boy saved from the gang life who now plans to become a doctor, due to the influence of El Sistema (Yola) in Los Angeles. But this is only part of the story. It's as if Time doesn't have a clue as to WHY the program is so inspiring to its participants (who rave about it, in Venezuela and here). Yeah, it's free--including free classical music instruments. Yeah, the teachers are caring. But these are secondary effects of the systems' core philosophy: that magnificent things result from a collective effort in which everyone is valuable and everyone contributes.

We have very nearly lost this insight in our society--or at least have lost it in public discussion of our values which is controlled by those who believe in a "dog eat dog" world. What is our collective effort as U.S. citizens? To make war? To make a few people rich? To let those few people dominate the world with weapons and hedge funds? Where is our commitment to each other? I think we do experience collectivity in many ways that don't get much attention--in the selfless acts of countless people who hold our broken society together as best they can with kindness and effort above and beyond the call of duty or salary, whether as virtuous individuals or in groups (for instance, those who work at soup kitchens or food banks). But when acts that result from collective consciousness are noted by the Corporate Press, it is generally narrated as heroics--as unusual and as individual merit. Meanwhile, collective human perfidy is stressed--mobs trampling each for some googaw at Walmart in the Christmas rush--or is invented (like garbage and crime at Occupy camps--I heard a Corporate News nitwit snickering on the radio the other day about the "filth and crime" at the Occupy camp in Oakland--as if the cops who were attacking them were telling the truth. 'Yep, folks! Gotta clean out that filth.') Collective effort for the common good is ignored or put down.

El Sistema, like the socialist government of Venezuela that supports it, is bringing an entirely different perspective on human effort back into the world: everyone is valuable, everyone contributes and together we make something beautiful. Life's true joy is not about a bloody, clawing climb up the ladder of success--to being a star musician or a (rich) doctor or Bill Gates. Life's true joy is generosity all around--making the leap out of your own ego needs to a higher plane, where you are plugged into the collective well-being of your family, your community, your friends, your nation and the human race as a whole. And everyone is capable of that leap--everyone!

THAT is why El Sistema has been so successful at transforming the lives of street children. THAT is its secret. It allows them to experience themselves as part of a collective creation of beauty and unity. Our children are bombarded with models of individual stardom and fatcat riches, and brutal power over others, some of it so grotesque as to seem like gargoyles from Hell (Michael Jackson, George W. Bush). It is no wonder that our children are often demoralized and often in ill health, whether physical or mental. When and where do we teach them what the children in El Sistema are learning? Where is OUR social and government effort to extol and to support collective efforts for the common good? We pit our children against each other, and our teachers against each other, and our schools against each other--for instance, with the falsely named "No Child Left Behind" TESTING (and the worst kind of testing--multiple choice bullshit). We punish and exclude those who fail and abandon them to prison, gang life, violence and despair--or maybe if their backgrounds are privileged they end up insolently destroying companies, firing workers, looting banks and inventing schemes to make themselves rich by doing nothing. Yes, rich kids suffer, too, from the lack of common purpose for the common good that is so evident in our institutions.

I obviously have mixed feelings about Time's coverage of El Sistema. They miss the whole the point of this educational system. But perhaps it will prompt people to look into it more deeply and get some passion in their hearts to fill this vacancy in our social and political life: our common purpose for the common good. We did have this passion, once, as a society, during the New Deal. Everyone is valuable; everyone contributes. This is what democracy is all about, it seems to me. We need to recover that collective strength.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. If I ever won the lottery (yeah, right) I'd fund something like that, only with choirs,

which cost a lot less and have great potential for creating solidarity. Singing in a choir fosters the same sense of group cohesiveness and personal responsibility that playing in an orchestra does.

In Estonia, nearly everyone belongs to a choir of some sort, starting from childhood.

When things began loosening up in the Soviet Union, the Estonians, who had kept up their choral tradition throughout the Soviet period, began gathering in public places and singing banned songs. Since everyone knew the same songs, the movement kept growing. There's a documentary about it called "The Singing Revolution." Catch it if you can.

Imagine an Occupy Wall Street movement with everyone knowing the same songs.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Lol! We need some musical cohesion in the Occupy Movement!

Thanks for the info on Estonia! Brand new info to me!

If our Corporate Rulers/War Profiteers were smarter, they'd ban El Sistema! They don't realize what the true threat from Venezuela is! Tens of thousands of street kids playing Beethoven! My god! The citadels of corruption have no weapons against this!

[ChangoLoa]

3. El sistema has been fully funded by the Venezuelan State since 1975.

It is a civil program, not a political one as you describe it by using the word "socialist". I am a socialist and I find it quite strange that you'd transform collective into collectivist or social into socialist. El sistema is a collective, social program, built up by one man, Abreu, and funded by the Venezuelan government since 1975.

Last time you were writing about this phenomenon, you said something like the "revolution created Dudamel" and I showed to you that Dudamel was already 18 when Chavez was elected. So, that means that your real point was that pre-Chavez governments created Dudamel. And wouldn't agree with that, because El Sistema came from our civil society, not from our political sphere. It is hence a Venezuelan program that should be (already is) imitated through the planet. But it's not political, that's exactly where its strength comes from. I used to learn music in El Sistema when I was a kid and have friends who teach music in the program nowadays.

[Peace Patriot]

5. The Chavez government vastly expanded state funding of El Sistema

and has built them a state-of-the-art concert hall in Caracas. This is the funding that has enabled this program to educate a hundred thousand children in classical music orchestral playing and to aim at one million children and expansion of the system worldwide. Previous governments funded the orchestra which was winning acclaim in other countries. The Chavez government funded the schools for expansion of the program to many more children.

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"The current Chavez administration has been the most generous patron of El Sistema so far, footing almost its entire annual operating budget as well as additional capital projects."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Sistema

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"In September 2007, President Hugo Chávez announced on television a new government program, Misión Música, designed to provide tuition and music instruments to Venezuelan children, with Abreu present on the TV program."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Sistema

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"The current Chavez government has committed to expand it to one million children in ten years...".

"...the Chavez government has committed to triple the funding...".

http://www.arts.virginia.gov/resources/artworks/EricBoothReadingList1.pdf

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The Chavez government has also funded expansion of the program to the public school system and even to the penal system.

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Supported by the government, El Sistema has started to introduce its music program into the public-school curriculum, aiming to be in every school and to support 500,000 children by 2015.[11]

The project has been extended to the penal system. On 25 May 2008, Leidys Asuaje wrote for Venezuelan daily El Nacional: "The plan to humanize jails through music began eleven months ago under the tutelage of the Ministry of the Interior and Justice and FESNOJIV...."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Sistema

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Obviously, almost any government--including the previous oil elite governments--would like to gain cultural kudos by supporting such a program, but the Chavez government has gone all out in support of expansion of this program for the very reason that it is socialist at its core. Jose Abreu may be shrewd at navigating the political scene but, as the wikipedia article says, he "has dedicated himself to a utopian dream in which an orchestra represents the ideal society, and the sooner a child is nurtured in that environment, the better for all."

You can't get more socialist than that.

I've read/viewed extensive interviews with Abreu, El Sistema's teachers, Dudamel and others and they make this point again and again. El Sistema is a social transformation system and its point is that an orchestra is a collective.

You are the one who is being political, trying to downplay the Chavez government's vast funding of, and great affinity with, El Sistema, because you are forever dissing the Chavez government, on every issue, just like the Corporate/War Profiteer press and the U.S. State Department.

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"It is one of the most mission-driven large programs I have ever seen. At every nucleo, all the educators and staff can tell you exactly what the goals of El Sistema are—a stunningly unified vision and purpose. Even more impressively, each individual uses her or his own words, images and stories to describe these goals. This is powerful advocacy: consistent, unified vision and message, from the national leaders to the local leaders to all the teachers to every janitor. But the message never sounds canned; it is always personal and passionate. They all have their eyes on the same prize, and they never lose sight of it.

(SNIP)

"They have the vision of entire culture change in their eyes...".

http://www.arts.virginia.gov/resources/artworks/EricBoothReadingList1.pdf

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And here is part of what the Chavez government has done for El Sistema:

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"For many years the administration of FESTNIJOV scrambled creatively to find spaces for their nucleos; now they are constantly approached to start new centers throughout the country. Next month they are opening their extraordinary new center, The National Center for Social Action Through Music. It is a huge downtown Caracas complex with four major concert halls, soundproofed so five orchestras can be rehearsing at the same time; it has dozens of other performance spaces, dozens of practice rooms and classrooms—space enough for 4,000 students. And at Abreu’s demand, no (well, few) administrative offices—all music. Major orchestras from around the world are seeking bookings in the new central hall, which is purported to have the best acoustics on the continent; but rental requires that they do education work with El Sistema students. The building is wired for Internet 2, and will make their entire enormous video archive of performances and classes available to the world digitally. One characteristic feature in the new hall is that it is situated on one side of the largest public park in downtown Caracas. The park is now too dangerous for citizens to use. So the building is creating a large outdoor stage that opens into the park, and they are working with the police to make it safe for the public to attend free concerts there—giving the park back to the public, through music.

http://www.arts.virginia.gov/resources/artworks/EricBoothReadingList1.pdf

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BOTH Jose Abreu and the Chavez government aimed to change society in almost identical ways--to foster the dignity and human rights of the poor through collective consciousness and to make sharing and cooperation society's highest values. Abreu did it with music and specifically orchestral playing and Chavez with grass roots political organizing of the poor and empowerment of the poor through community councils and numerous social programs. These aims finally came together with the election of the Chavez government and vast improvement in funding of El Sistema. To deny this is "Tea Partyish," in my view. It fails to recognize reality.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Beautiful! I am saving your material on 'El Sistema" for future reference.

Had never heard of that amazing complex for music in Caracas before seeing your post. It is astonishing, and its vision is something you'd think would fill a citizen with pride. You'd certainly think so!

As it is it appears there are some residents who'd prefer to keep the enjoyment and knowledge of the arts all to themselves, as in the past. Let the poor spend its time trying to keep alive from day to day, as before, apparently is their position.

We all know how the future would have looked for the country had it continued on the same path it had been forced to accept before the people elected a different kind of leader.

Thank you for taking the time to share these facts with those of us who damned well care!

[ChangoLoa]

7. Doesn't make it a socialist program.

It's not a governmental nor a political program, but a social one. And even if it was organized - and not only funded - by the government, it still wouldn't be "socialist". Just like mutualized, socialized medicine is not "socialist".

[Judi Lynn]

4. Found an interesting article which says Chavez made "El Sistema" a federally supported program.

VENEZUELA RISING
As international artists hail Venezuela as ‘the future of music’ Candela explores why recognition has taken so long to come.
By Amaranta Wright

~snip~
The timing of the arrival and recognition of Venezuelan talent on the international scene is no coincidence. Experts such as University of East Anglia’s Hazel Marsh suggest it is a symptom of a wider renaissance that is sweeping Venezuela as a result of government cultural policy over the last ten years. As well as adopting El Sistema as a state programme and pummelling money into it, Hugo Chavez’ newly created Ministry of Culture, with its slogan la cultura es el pueblo (culture is people) has embarked on a two pronged social policy to make high art accessible to the general public and give previously denied esteem to Afro-Venezuelan and indigenous Venezuelan musicianship.

http://latinolife.co.uk/arts-culture/culture/venezuela-rising

Thanks for the comments on the Time article.