Feeding people's souls, forgetting their vices

I don't have as much time as I wanted to describe Tocar Y Luchar; a French-speaking group is meeting at our house this evening so I have to tidy up and prepare "une petite collation." Vivien has set each of us the challenge of finding some Wonders of the World other than the ones on the official list, and I've decided that my choice will be a toss up between Wells Cathedral (which I have visited) and the Library of Alexandria (which I haven't, but would like to).

However I promised to add something about the film to this blog, so here's a selection of quotations from musicians interviewed during the documentary, expressing their opinions about the young Venezuelans' musical education—El Sistema, as it's called.

The voice-over to a sequence showing an 11-year old child playing her violin out of doors along the narrow back-streets of the slums of La Vega, Caracas, goes something like this:

We think of social programmes providing food, shelter or medical assistance, but feeding people's souls [gives them the means to] find a way to feed themselves, house themselves ... and they'll grow into people of significance and [make a] contribution... When you establish the inner life of somebody ... then the possibility ... to enhance, to uplift society is endless.

Another interviewee said:

Art implies a sense of perfection ...therefore a road to excellence. What has the orchestra planted in their souls? A sense of harmony, of order, of rhythm ... of the aesthetic, of the beautiful, of the universal ... and the language of the invisible, transmitted unseen through music.

The little girl herself commented that she had discovered another world and that when she's playing her violin she forgets everything else. (In Spanish she said, "I forget about all the vices!").

Sir Simon Rattle, who recently recruited one of Venezuela's young double-bass players (Edicson Ruiz) into the Berlin Philharmonic, went so far as to say that the national musical education documented in this film was

not only enriching lives, but saving lives! ... Music is always about something, not just about itself ... Clearly, music is the most important thing in the world to these kids, and that comes over, loud and clear.

There was also footage of Placido Domingo being moved to tears by the high quality of the Venezuelan youth choirs and orchestras when he first heard them and another touching episode was where they showed mentally and physically handicapped children becoming involved in the music-making. One of the best trumpeters shown in the film is a blind 12-year old.

The man who started this, José Antonio Abreu, wants no less than to change the world so that classical music in our times (or "for eternity," as he put it!) becomes no longer something created by a minority for a minority, or even by a minority for a majority, but by a majority for a majority. He has been doing his best to realise this dream in Latin America for the last thirty years.