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Long before I came to live here in Merida, Venezuela, I was a public defender attorney in Hawaii, where I worked in the Family Court representing juvenile offenders. It was heart-breaking to see kids, many of whom had learning disabilities and thus trouble in school, coming repeatedly back into court for shop lifting, auto theft, burglaries, assaults and the like. One group of six or so kids burglarized a string of homes in a two block area. The cops knew that the same kids had done all five burglaries because items stolen from house 1 were found in houses 2 and 3, items from house 2 were found in houses 4 and 5. Apparently, they carried radios and CD players stolen from one house on to the next, if they found a better radio or CD player in the next house, they left the previously stolen goods and picked up their new treasures, carrying those to house 3, etc. After the police arrested the kids, the community had to hold a "swap meet" to recover all their own things. The kids arrested for the string of thefts were angry at being arrested, but also proud of all the havoc they had created in the neighborhood. They had also gained the grudging admiration of their schoolmates for the "caper" they had brought off. In their world, sometimes success and respect could only be attained through committing more and bigger crimes than their peers Many of my juvenile clients were repeat offenders, coming back into court with ever more serious crimes. The shoplifter of 12 became the armed burglar at 15. Their parents had to come to court too, although some failed to show up, thus insuring their own arrest on contempt of court charges. Many of the parents, as well as the children, were clearly overwhelmed by drugs and alcohol. I noticed, however, that some kids did not come back to court. Had they just "dropped out" of the crime business? When I met their parents on the street, I word learn that "bad Max" had learned to play the guitar and was now in a band, or that sultry Susie was now showing up and winning on the tennis court. These few kids had found a passion which was saving their lives. But the majority of the kids, upon reaching 18, kept on in the crime business, and graduated into the adult criminal justice system. If only, I frequently mused, the courts would "sentence" kids to tennis, basketball , to learn guitar or flute, to take art, dance lessons, there would be far fewer kids who thereafter needed maximum security prison. It was with that background that I discovered with delight that, for the last 30 years, a foundation in Venezuela, created by a venerated composer, has been helping poor kids find their life-saving passions by providing free music lessons, developing musicians to an advanced level, and creating student orchestra’s all over the country. Alice O’Keeffe writes for Britain’s New Statesmen ( www.newstatesmen.com]) on the revolution in the development of musical talent in Venezuela. Her article was reprinted at Venezuela’s English language website, www.Venezuelanalysis.com. www.venezuelanalysis.com], edited in Caracas by American journalist, Greg Wilpert, is the place to go.]
But on to the O’Keeffe story:
Felix Briseno was brought up with his six siblings in a small apartment in Guarenas, a run-down town on the outskirts of Caracas. His father is a security guard and his mother is a housewife. As a child, he says, he found it impossible to imagine the world outside the scrubby grass forecourt where he was allowed out to play. "There are lots of people here who won't even
travel the 45-minute drive to Caracas. The horizons are very limited."
While his schoolfriends and siblings scratch a living in local factories, Felix, who is now 22, has made a remarkable transition. He is a classically trained conductor, working with two youth orchestras in Guarenas. Last summer he became the first member of his family to apply for a passport when he travelled to England to attend a music summer school. His dream is to follow in the footsteps of his hero Gustavo Dudamel, the 26-year-old Venezuelan conductor who is one of the world's fastest-rising talents in classical music. "Music has not just opened doors for me professionally," says Felix, "it has opened my mind to whole world of possibilities."
Stories such as his are not unusual in the music school hidden away behind an unmarked door in one of Guarenas's backstreets. Inside, hundreds of children scurry around carrying instruments, scores and music stands, and the air bristles with arpeggios and scales. Under programmes run by the Foundation for the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela (Fesnojiv), Venezuela's pioneering music education network commonly known as "El Sistema", all children in Guarenas have access to a free education in classical music. Demand for the scheme from the local people seems insatiable; there are currently 700 students, and another 600 are on the waiting list.
This revolution in the development of musical talent started 30 years ago, long before President Chavez was elected, but expresses the essence of what the new Bolivarian revolution is all about: creating the conditions in which all the people can fully develop their talents and creativity.
El Sistema was begun by the now 68 year old composer Jose Antonio Abreu, still its director, who started a free community music school in a garage. That first garage school has sporned hundreds of other free music schools which, in turn, have generated thousands of musical groups, bands, and even national orchestras.
In the 30 years since its foundation, El Sistema has evolved into one of the most successful community arts programs in the world. There are 250,000 children studying music under its auspices across Venezuela, from the most remote rural villages to the poorest barrios of Caracas. Its founder, the composer/statesman José Antonio Abreu has said that it heralds a "new era in which great art is created by the majority, for the majority". In a politically turbulent country, it has provided a rare point of consensus, attracting support from a succession of governments including, most recently, that of the socialist president Hugo Chávez, who has financed a state-of-the-art concert hall and rehearsal space in Caracas.
Abreu's innovation was to argue that a musical training can overcome the "spiritual poverty" that perpetuates social and economic inequality, giving young people the internal resources to overcome a disadvantaged background. He has skillfully negotiated the hazards of Venezuelan politics by maintaining El Sistema at arm's length from all governments. "This is a social and artistic project," he told me firmly. "It has nothing whatsoever to do with politics."
Abreu may believe that his musical program has "nothing whatsoever to do with politics", and yet it can easily serve as a model for transforming politics and economics in the service of benefiting every member of society.
True, it takes a lot of money to provide instruction and musical instruments to hundreds of thousands of children, and the Chavez government is supplying that money in Venezuela. But to take children out of the cycle of poverty and despair, giving them dignity and self-respect, is worth far more than the billions of dollars which countries such as the U.S. spend on its vast prison systems.
"This building becomes a community, and a safe haven for many students," says the centre's dedicated administrator, Mercedes Ascanio. "We are conscious that we are not just creating musicians, we are creating citizens. They learn solidarity, punctuality, organisation. They become more mature and responsible. Many of them have told me that if they hadn't come here they would have ended up in prison or dead."
The school has become a vital cultural focus for the people of Guarenas; it is run by parents, and the older children are expected to take on teaching responsibilities, training the younger children in addition to pursuing their own studies. "Young people are proactive by nature," says Ascanio. "We just give them the space to do it."
Awakening and training the passions and talents of those who previously would have had no access to music or to success has generated enormous benefit, not only to Venezuela but to the world:
Graduates from the SBYO, which is made up of El Sistema's best musicians aged 17-24, have been snapped up by some of the world's most prestigious orchestras. Dudamel is now principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and will soon take over from Esa-Pekka Salonen as musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A 22-year-old double bassist, Edicson Ruiz, is now playing with the Berlin Philharmonic. The SBYO itself has been signed to Deutsche Grammophon and will play at the Proms and the Edinburgh Festival this summer.
El Sistema is a model for the development of integrated and committed communities:
"El Sistema creates a community in which the most important thing is the orchestra," Dudamel tells me when I meet him in Caracas later that week. "In music conservatories in other parts of the world the focus is on individual study, but in Venezuela you are always encouraged to share in the group."
He stresses that the social and musical objectives of the orchestra are inextricably linked. "The emphasis on the collective is what gives our orchestras their very special sound. But it is also where we are constructing our country. An orchestra is a harmonious community, where you can have a different background or view of the world to the person sitting next to you, but you still sit down with a shared objective."
The El Sistema music school near where I live in Venezuela, is a large, freshly painted building on the Gloria Patria Plaza here in Merida. The building’s court yard hosts a small outdoor cafe where music students gather to await their lessons and chat. One sees groups of students approaching the center lugging cellos, violins and flute cases. From the open windows streams the sounds of musical scales and pieces of orchestral scores. It is an altogether inviting place. I wonder, as I walk by, whether I could pass for 16 and join them to take up a new instrument. It would have to be the flute as I travel a lot and a harp, an instrument I’d love to learn, just wouldn’t fit in my suitcase.
Ten blocks or so north of the El Sistema school is the huge old stone edifice which houses the University of Los Andes music department. I expect that, as a result of the El Sistema program, thousands of children who, previously would never have had any access to a college or university education, have entered the University building as musicians and attained university degrees in addition to a life enriched by music. Like the El Sistema program, public university education is completely funded by the government.
El Sistema’s Director, Jose Abreu, may not give speeches at the UN or propose changes to the Venezuelan Constitution, but he and the thousands of El Sistema students and their families are as much a part of the Bolivarian Revolution as is Hugo Chavez. We desperately need such a Bolivarian Revolution here in the U.S.
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