This art­icle was ori­gin­ally pub­lished on the Bris­bane Girls Gram­mar School web site.

Since the mid-1980s the alarm bells have been sound­ing in the west­ern world for the future of clas­sical music. Sub­scrip­tion sales to con­certs have fallen each year, audi­ences are aging, and younger people seem to be dis­en­gaged by clas­sical music. Pro­fes­sional arts com­pan­ies are strug­gling with their budgets requir­ing increased gov­ern­ment sup­port, redu­cing their activ­it­ies or even clos­ing com­pletely. The clos­ure of the iconic Tower Records retail chain in the United States sig­nalled the decline of the clas­sical record­ing industry and the vibrant and prof­it­able pro­duc­tion line that shaped the per­form­ance styles of thou­sands of twentieth-century musi­cians and the know­ledge of mil­lions of listen­ers. Even the clas­sical music critic in the daily papers has all but dis­ap­peared as read­ers no longer rely on clas­sical reviews.

A quick search of the Inter­net can read­ily find many art­icles lament­ing the state of music edu­ca­tion in lead­ing coun­tries such as the United States, Bri­tain and Ger­many, owing to fund­ing cut­backs. In Aus­tralia the out­look is also bleak with the 2005 National Review of School Music Edu­ca­tion mak­ing it clear that music edu­ca­tion is ‘at a crit­ical point where action is needed’ and that ‘there are cycles of neg­lect and inequal­ity which impact to the det­ri­ment of too many young Aus­trali­ans.’ (Pas­coe et al., 2005, p. iii) Little tan­gible change has been evid­ent at the national level since this report was delivered except the announce­ment by Min­is­ter Gar­rett in April this year that the arts would be included in stage two of the national cur­riculum process.

For­tu­nately, this is not the case in Venezuela where the cap­ital, Cara­cas, owns the dubi­ous title of ‘murder cap­ital of the world.’ (Paulin, 2008) Here a pro­ject to teach clas­sical music to chil­dren has become a vibrant force in youth cul­ture cre­at­ing sig­ni­fic­ant social change across the coun­try. Accord­ing to Simon Rattle, con­ductor of the Ber­lin Phil­har­monic Orches­tra, the pro­ject is ‘doing the most import­ant work in clas­sical music any­where in the world’. (Gould, 2005)

Since 1975 a pro­gramme known as El Sis­tema has trans­formed the lives of many under­priv­ileged and at-risk youths in Venezuela by ‘sys­tem­at­iz­ing music edu­ca­tion and pro­mot­ing the col­lect­ive prac­tice of music through sym­phony orches­tras and chor­uses as a means of social organ­isa­tion and com­munity devel­op­ment’ (Godi­erno Bolivari­ano de Venezuela, (n.d.)). Today the form­ally titled National Sys­tem of Youth and Children’s Orches­tras of Venezuela man­ages 220 youth orches­tras and choirs and has 350,000 young musi­cians registered as part of the musical phe­nomenon. In addi­tion, thirty pro­fes­sional orches­tras have also been estab­lished (In com­par­ison, Aus­tralia has only six pro­fes­sional sym­phony orchestras).

The founder and vis­ion­ary for El Sis­tema was the extraordin­ary social cru­sader Dr Jose Antino Abreu, a musi­cian and former gov­ern­ment min­is­ter for eco­nomic plan­ning and cul­ture. Dr Abreu’s pro­found con­cern regard­ing the mag­nitude of misery and poverty in the coun­try, and the social inequal­ity that made music the priv­ilege of the elite class ignited his vis­ion. ‘The more I stud­ied Beeth­oven the man as well as the com­poser the more I real­ised how out­raged he would be by the situ­ation. Beeth­oven was a man of pro­found demo­cratic human­ism and thus I set out to cre­ate a means whereby music could be a way of vin­dic­at­ing the rights of the masses.’(Vulliamy, 2007)

Dr Abreu resigned his gov­ern­ment pos­i­tions and began his mis­sion by devel­op­ing the Simon Bolivair Youth Orches­tra that became a power­ful mag­net attract­ing tal­en­ted young musi­cians. After aston­ish­ing suc­cess at the Inter­na­tional Youth Orches­tra Com­pet­i­tion in Scot­land in 1977, the gov­ern­ment fully fun­ded the orches­tra. El Sis­tema was then stra­tegic­ally placed under the social ser­vices min­istry, which has been cru­cial to its suc­cess under ten dif­fer­ent admin­is­tra­tions, both con­ser­vat­ive and leftist.

Today at 180 com­munity centres or Nuc­leos as they are known, orches­tral and choral pro­grammes are delivered to 350,000 young people with a com­mit­ment to keep­ing the joy and fun ever present in the learn­ing pro­cess. The teach­ers, many former stu­dents, provide tuition in groups, with an emphasis on intens­ive ensemble pre­par­a­tion. They always work closely with par­ents to ensure that the fam­ily under­stands the com­mit­ment required of them. In these impov­er­ished com­munit­ies where crime is pre­val­ent, the orches­tras and choirs have become a safe haven for young people and their fam­il­ies in the community.

An expan­sion of El Sis­tema occurred in 2004 when a sys­tem of Pen­it­en­tiary Sym­phony Orches­tras was estab­lished for the pur­pose of redu­cing viol­ence in jails and pre­par­ing inmates for their rein­teg­ra­tion into soci­ety. By play­ing in the orches­tra inmates could have their term shortened and be given the equi­val­ent hours to study. El Sis­tema also has a Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion Pro­gramme involving 700 stu­dents with the pur­pose of integ­rat­ing people with dis­ab­il­it­ies into soci­ety through music. Twelve choirs known as the White Hands Chorus are the flag­ship of the Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion Pro­gramme and are made up of stu­dents with dis­ab­il­it­ies includ­ing hear­ing impair­ments, vis­ion impair­ments, cog­nit­ive and motor impair­ments, down syn­drome, learn­ing dis­ab­il­it­ies and autism.

El Sis­tema is jus­ti­fi­ably proud of its gradu­ates, one of whom is the twenty-six year old Gust­avo Dudamel who has been appoin­ted Music Dir­ector of the Los Angeles Phil­har­monic for the cur­rent sea­son. Described by Simon Rattle as ‘the most aston­ish­ingly gif­ted con­ductor he has ever met’ (Vul­li­amy, 2007), Dudamel is in demand across the world. Double bassist Adic­son Ruiz has earned his seat in the Ber­lin Phil­har­monic at just twenty years of age and many more have gained pos­i­tions at the premier music schools in Europe and the United States.

Build­ing on the suc­cess of El Sis­tema to reduce crime and raise the qual­ity of life, Pres­id­ent Hugo Chavez announced in 2007 the cre­ation of ‘Mision Musica’, a gov­ern­ment fun­ded effort to provide free tuition and instru­ments to one mil­lion impov­er­ished chil­dren (Car­roll, 2007). With $30 mil­lion in annual gov­ern­ment fund­ing, El Sis­tema is now assured of a bright future and Dr Abreu’s dream of help­ing ‘the fight of the poor and aban­doned child against everything that opposes his full real­isa­tion as a human being’ is being real­ised. (Gould, 2005)

Through El Sis­tema Dr Abreu has been able to under­take a task that reaches far bey­ond music to res­cue the edu­ca­tion of chil­dren from extremely impov­er­ished cir­cum­stances through train­ing rehab­il­it­a­tion and pre­ven­tion of crim­inal beha­viour and drug abuse.

In spite of appalling poverty, drug addic­tion, hard­ship and oppres­sion, El Sis­tema has been a stun­ning suc­cess, not only in cre­at­ing fine young musi­cians but restor­ing dig­nity to those who take up the chal­lenge. Today this unique pro­gramme has been imple­men­ted in twenty-five coun­tries that are seek­ing to reduce the levels of crime, poverty, illit­er­acy and social exclu­sion in the young population.

Although we don’t suf­fer the same level of hard­ship at Bris­bane Girls Gram­mar School, our own El Sis­tema has been flour­ish­ing for many years, sup­por­ted by the moun­tain of research that ‘makes it unthink­able to con­sider pre­par­ing a child for life without a solid back­ground in music’ (Lautzen­he­iser, 2005). With a goal of enga­ging all stu­dents in the School, the pro­gramme is struc­tured to cater for diverse levels of abil­ity as girls explore the rich cul­tural her­it­age of clas­sical music.

On Sat­urday even­ing the 2009 Gala Con­cert titled Vil­lains will show­case not only the depth of tal­ent and tech­nical bril­liance in our com­munity that has been acquired after years of ded­ic­a­tion and per­sist­ence, but also the aes­thetic ideals of cre­ativ­ity, sens­it­iv­ity and ima­gin­a­tion. It is an import­ant oppor­tun­ity for our stu­dents to exper­i­ence the pleas­ure of self-expression at a new level that opens excit­ing vis­tas of self-satisfaction, devel­op­ing that most import­ant com­pon­ent of life, self-worth.

This capa­city for per­sonal dis­cip­line, cre­ativ­ity and self-expression is at the heart of what it is to be human and are the same ele­ments that have made the Venezuela pro­ject such a resound­ing social success.

From the com­mer­cial per­spect­ive it might be simple to draw the con­clu­sion that there is a real crisis in the clas­sical music world, but from an edu­ca­tional per­spect­ive the study of clas­sical music is gain­ing recog­ni­tion as a power­ful and essen­tial con­trib­utor to the devel­op­ment of every stu­dent. With Venezuela lead­ing the way and a renewed focus on music edu­ca­tion across the world, the true value of clas­sical music is being redis­covered as a vital social response to the chal­lenges of the 21st-century.

Mr M Sullivan

Ref­er­ences:

Car­roll, R. (2007, Septem­ber 4). Chavez pours mil­lions more into pion­eer­ing music scheme. The Guard­ian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/04/musicnews.venezuela

Godi­erno Bolivari­ano de Venezuela. (n.d.) National Sys­tem of Youth and Children’s Orches­tras of Venezuela. Retrieved Octo­ber 10, 2009 from http://www.fesnojiv.gob.ve/index.php

Gould, J. (2005, Novem­ber 28) Venezuela youths trans­formed by music. BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4457278.stm

Lautzen­he­iser, T. (2005). The value of Music. Retrieved from http://www.tmea.org/027_Magazine/Special_Edition/valueofmusic_r.htm

Pas­coe, R., Leong. S., Mac­Cal­lum, J., Mackin­lay, E., Marsh, K., Smith, B. et al. (2005). National review of school music edu­ca­tion: aug­ment­ing the dimin­ished. Retrieved from http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/C9AFAE54-6D72-44CC-A346-3CAF235CB268/8944/music_review_reportfinal.pdf

Paulin, D.,(2008, Octo­ber 01). Cara­cas: Murder cap­ital of the world. Amer­ican Thinker. Retrieved from http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/caracas_murder_capital_of_the.html

Vul­li­amy, E. (2007, July 29). Orches­tral Man­oeuvres. The Observer. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jul/29/classicalmusicandopera1