International   

New notes in Venezuelan slums

President Hugo Chavez

Caracas: President Hugo Chavez has thrown his weight behind a scheme which brings classical music into Venezuela’s slums, following international acclaim for the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. The Venezuelan leader announced the creation of ‘Mision Musica,’ a government-funded effort to give tuition and instruments to a million impoverished children.

He made the announcement on his Sunday television show, Alo Presidente, after reading out rapturous British reviews of the youth orchestra’s performances last month at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Mr. Chavez said thousands of newly formed communal councils, an engine of his socialist revolution, would each set up a music centre “to create the best system in the world.” Venezuela was entering a golden age of arts and culture which honoured the legacy of Bolivar, South America’s 19th century liberation hero, he said.

The announcement will tighten links between Mr. Chavez’ oil-funded radical agenda and the pioneering music scheme behind the youth orchestra’s success.

The system, as it is known, is the brainchild of Jose Antonio Abreu, a 68-year-old musician and economist. Independently of government and official support, he started giving music lessons to a handful of poor children 32 years ago. The initiative rippled across the barrios of the capital, Caracas, and other cities, enlisting thousands of children with the support of parents who saw it as a potential way out of poverty and crime.

Mr. Abreu described the programme’s social mission as helping “the fight of a poor and abandoned child against everything that opposes his full realisation as a human being.”

Graduates such as Gustavo Dudamel, who was named conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and electrifying performances from the system’s flagship ensemble, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, attracted widespread acclaim and official support. With £15 million annual government funding. The system now reaches 285,000 children and is being copied around the world.

Mr. Chavez has spoken glowingly about the orchestra before, but Sunday’s announcement could make it the cultural heart of his revolution.

The President showed TV clips of the orchestra’s European tour and read out glowing reviews, saying they were a welcome change from Western media reports which depicted Venezuela as being in an authoritarian grip. The young musicians would have a heroes’ homecoming, he said. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Hundreds of Sharif party activists arrested
Musharraf-PPP talks resume in Dubai
Sharif vows to oust Musharraf
Plane carrying aviation adventurer Steve Fossett missing
“Still on U.S. terror list”
Sri Lankan Army claims further success
Court orders re-routing of Israeli barrier
Bush hints at troop cut in Iraq
New notes in Venezuelan slums
Membership refused
Al-Qaeda agents held
Opposition wins poll
Royalists blamed
APEC may not open door to India for now

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu