Famed Venezuelan classical music schools for poor children gets 90% of its funding from the Chavez

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Wed May-05-10 07:32 PM
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Famed Venezuelan classical music schools for poor children gets 90% of its funding from the Chavez

government...but you wouldn't know that from this Boston Globe article, which is otherwise laudable, worth reading and very exciting, actually. The "El Sistema" revolution in classical music training for the poorest of the poor street children in Venezuela is an amazing phenomenon.

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Conducting a Movement: Charismatic Venezuelan Leads Classical Revolution

By BY JEREMY EICHLER � BOSTON GLOBE, May 1st 2010

On a recent morning in this chaotic, traffic-choked city, a large room is bursting with a children�s orchestra. Gustavo Dudamel has dropped by to observe and offer words of encouragement. But the children have other ideas.

�Conduct! Conduct! Conduct!�� they chant ecstatically from their seats. Protests are useless. Dudamel removes his watch, accepts a baton that seems to materialize from thin air, and steps onto a small podium. The room falls silent. For a split second the conductor beams out at the gathered sea of children. Then he uncorks a massive, rending downbeat. On his mark, 300 music students tear into the last movement of Mahler�s First Symphony, playing as if their lives depended on it.

The Venezuelan-born Dudamel is the most buzzed-about young conductor in the world. Having embarked as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic last fall at 28, he arrives today in Cambridge to accept an award at MIT. The musical movement he represents also has spun off a program based at New England Conservatory.

Meanwhile in his home country, Dudamel is the equivalent of a rock star.

Something remarkable has happened with classical music in Venezuela. The art form has been turned on its head, shorn of its elite associa tions, and harnessed as a vehicle for social change that reaches some of the poorest members of this society.

In a country whose homicide rates make it among the most dangerous in the world, this national music education movement � referred to simply as El Sistema � draws children off of the streets and into neighborhood centers for intensive musical engagement and orchestral training. The program, founded more than three decades ago, currently reaches 400,000 students. According to its organizers, 70 percent of the participating families live below the poverty line.

Dudamel is a product of this movement and is its most famous graduate. As his international career has blossomed, the conductor has remained unusually committed to his musical roots. In addition to his post in Los Angeles and another in Gothenburg, Sweden, he still holds the directorship of El Sistema�s veteran flagship ensemble, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. It is the group in which he came of age musically, first as a violinist and then as a conductor.

As those who saw that orchestra in Symphony Hall in 2007 or on YouTube can attest, the group plays with great intensity and excitement, qualities mirrored and distilled in Dudamel�s conducting. In a group this size, the musicians also have a striking sense of ensemble unity. And for good reason. El Sistema emphasizes orchestral involvement from the very earliest ages. The Simon Bolivar players literally grew up together and grew up in orchestras. Dudamel has known some of them since he was 7.

Sitting for an interview backstage at the Teresa Carre�o Theater, where he�s been rehearsing for performances with his orchestra as part of a two-week visit, Dudamel looks relaxed and contented. And why not? The work has been going well. The elaborate public relations machine that monitors his every movement in the United States has been replaced by a single old friend with a BlackBerry. He pals around with musicians and even the theater�s technical staff.

�Here is my home,�� he said. �Here is my family. I always say they are my muchachos. Sometimes I don�t have to say anything to the orchestra because they understand what I�m asking for only with a movement of my eye.��

For all of Dudamel�s conducting talent and charisma, all his Venezuelan warmth and bouncing curls, he has no doubt earned many admirers for the way he exemplifies the musical environment that produced him, one in which classical music has a deeper social relevance and children from a young age can be seen making music with a rare sense of exuberance and freedom. Simon Bolivar concertmaster Alejandro Carre�o, who has known Dudamel since childhood, put it succinctly: �When Gustavo goes to conduct other orchestras, he�s not just Gustavo Dudamel conducting,�� said Carre�o. �He is Gustavo Dudamel representing hundreds of thousands of kids here in Venezuela, including us.��

In his own comments, Dudamel makes clear how important it is for him to recharge here in Venezuela. A trip home is a return to the source. �I learn a lot from the children and from the young musicians. Their souls are really clean. Here, if you go to a music center, you see all the rooms full of people working, and they have a smile on their face because they are doing what they love,�� he said. �This is what I always say to the professional orchestras: Remember the reason why you are a musician. You are a musician not because of the money or because of the job, but because you were once in love with the music. You were fighting to play it! Of course it is natural to forget with the years. You go, you play, you go back to your house, and you forget. This is the problem that I see in classical music � the routine. We have to destroy that. This is also our job as conductors.��

Thanks in no small part to Dudamel himself, the word has spread about El Sistema. There have been at least two documentaries made, and a third film plus a book are on the way. Countries in Europe and the Americas are scrambling to understand the principles of El Sistema and transplant them within their own borders.

To spread the movement in the United States, El Sistema USA was founded last year and headquartered at New England Conservatory. Under its auspices, the first class of nine Abreu Fellows (named after El Sistema�s founder, Jos� Antonio Abreu) have been traveling in Venezuela for the last two months to study how it all works. After their fellowship year ends in June, they will begin fanning out across the country to lead various El Sistema-modeled initiatives, often in partnerships with schools, orchestras, or existing community organizations.

�I think we�ve all been reinspired here,�� said Kathryn Wyatt, one of the Abreu Fellows. �We�re all just really excited to get back home, to share our stories, and to start working to enlist lots more people so we can really have a movement and a critical mass in the US.��

While critics parse his artistic growth and his musical range as a conductor, Dudamel seems to be evolving quite naturally into his other role as ambassador for the growing El Sistema movement. Anticipating his tenure, the Los Angeles Philharmonic launched a new youth orchestra in South Central Los Angeles with free instruments for its participants. During his brief stay at MIT, the conductor will accept the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (and its cash award of $75,000). He will also lead a rehearsal with the university orchestra and participate in a public panel on music and social change tomorrow at 2 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium.

Backstage in Caracas, Dudamel projects a boyish excitement about his many upcoming projects, including his trip to Boston. He can�t wait to eat � he struggles to conjure the words in English � �clam chowder!�� But beneath his easy affability there is a sense of clear-eyed focus on the social mission that drives so much music-making in Venezuela.

�Look,�� he said, �exclusion is the problem of our society. When you give a child an instrument, you are including them immediately. We have to try to give culture to the people as we are giving health, as we are giving food, as we are giving education. Music and culture have to be a right for the citizens. For me, it�s very important to say everywhere I go: Look, this is possible.��

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2010/04/16/conducting_a_movement/?page=full

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This Boston Globe article fails to note that "El Sistema" receives 90% of its funding from the Chavez government, and certainly could not have expanded so dramatically, with thousands of poor children now being trained in classical music production in an orchestra--the communal experience, commented upon in many articles, that motivates them to learn and to perform well--without that SOCIALIST funding from a SOCIALIST government.

"The Venezuelan (children's classical music) program receives about $80 million a year, mostly from its government."
http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/opera-classical/73275/orquesta-sinfonica-simon-bolivar-at-orchestra-hall-classical-music-preview

"The program comprises 184 centers around Venezuela and receives 90% of its funding from the state."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/10/el-sistema-documentary-highlights-disadvantaged-youth-in-venezuela-.html

The Boston Globe article further places Dudamel's own description of "El Sistema"'s social mission at the very end of the article, where "El Sistema"'s spectacularly talented but down-to-earth young conductor speaks of the Bolivarian goals of inclusion, of feeding the poor, and providing free education and stressing that culture is a RIGHT. "El Sistema"'s mission is rather vague to that point. Dudamel makes it very concrete--the RIGHTS of the poor to food, education and culture.

Dudamel is a product not just of "El Sistema" (which was founded decades ago) but also he is a product of the Bolivarian Revolution which put Hugo Chavez into office, returned him to office after a U.S.-backed rightwing coup attempt and has given him and his government huge approval ratings and electoral victories in one of the most democratic countries in Latin America, with provably transparent, honest, internationally certified elections. And that democracy revolution naturally supports "El Sistema." In fact, you could almost say that "El Sistema" was the pre-revolution--the planter of the idea that the poor have rights and are capable of tremendous achievements, if given a chance in the correct spirit--not to become billionaires and "rock stars" but to perform classical music and please an audience TOGETHER.

This IS the spirit of the Bolivarian Revolution, which our government and our corpo-fascist press tells so many lies about, and hates and relentlessly reviles. The poor have rights and are capable of tremendous achievements, if given a chance in the correct spirit--not to become billionaires and "rock stars" but to perform classical music and please an audience TOGETHER.

Our corporate overlords instead stress getting rich as the purpose of democracy (and music!). They equate predatory capitalism WITH democracy. It is in the interest of the rich plunderers who are running things here to isolate the individual peons of our system--the so-called citizens--make everybody feel alone and disempowered, "divide and conquer" us, split us into factions of women, gays, blacks, browns, 'illegals,' rich vs. poor, workers vs. professionals, and so forth--whatever divides us--so that we cannot exercise our collective will as a sovereign people, which is further damaged--an almost fatal blow--by items like corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting and the filthy campaign money/lobbying system. Our togetherness is their chief enemy, and the togetherness that has been fostered by "El Sistema" and by the grass roots of Venezuela, and by the government they have repeatedly elected, is also their enemy. They accept a "star," like Dudamel. It fits their "Michael Jackson" notion of who is important. The subtle message of this Boston Globe article--not quite so crass-- is that the COLLECTIVE nature of the education that Dudamel received, and certainly the SOCIALIST government which paid his way--and that of tens of thousands of other poor children--are unimportant aspects of his story. The first is treated as "unusual"; the second is not even mentioned.

Here, we cut education--and cut it and cut it--to benefit war profiteers, banksters and multinational corporations. In Venezuela, the government lavishly funds education. It is a top priority. And it has shown great results--a near wipeout of illiteracy, a doubling of high school and college enrollment and 400,000 mostly very poor children enrolled in intense classical music training, some from age 2, as well as some 200 children's orchestras formed throughout Venezuela, supported by the Chavez government. While we cut teachers, close libraries and make a college education unaffordable, Venezuela is doing the opposite. They are investing in the future. And what do our corporate rulers invest in--they literally invest in the FAILURE of poor peoples' mortgages; they bet that they will FAIL. They make money from FAILURE.

I think that transparent vote counting is the key factor here--as to Venezuela funding education and our corporate rulers profiting from failure. Others may cite other factors--but if the public is barred from seeing and understanding how votes are counted (as they are here*), then the basic condition of democracy does not exist, and if private corporations are 'counting' the votes in secret, you KNOW that they are cheating. 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting with virtually no audit/recount controls, as throughout the U.S., is MADE FOR CHEATING.

The Boston Globe leaves out the second most important factor in "El Sistema"'s success. The first was the idea. The second was the massive government FUNDING of the idea. And THAT funding is the result of TRANSPARENT vote counting.*

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*(Venezuela uses electronic voting, but it is an OPEN SOURCE--as opposed to a 'TRADE SECRET'--system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and they conduct a whopping 55% audit of the ballots to check for machine fraud--more than five times what experts whom I respect say is necessary (10%). Half the states in the U.S. do NO AUDIT AT ALL; the other half do a miserably inadequate 1% audit, with a 'TRADE SECRET' system that is now virtually monopolized by ONE rightwing corporation--ES&S, which just bought out Diebold. Venezuela also has other "best practices" rules, such as a ban on political ads in the weeks before an election (to prevent vicious, last-minute "hit" pieces, such as we have here), and the government welcomes all the major international election monitoring groups to crawl all over the country during elections. They have all certified Venezuela's elections as honest and aboveboard. Venezuela also fosters very high voter turnouts and maximum citizen participation.)