El Sistema is not the only way of enhancing children’s lives with music to have come out of Venezuela.
While in Colombia, I had a chance to catch up with the incredible Maria Guinand, director of the Scola Cantorum de Venezuela. I had first met her in 2008, when she came to a University Voices choir jamboree in Toronto organized by Soundstreams.
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- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
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Guinand uses voices — the ultimate in inexpensive and highly mobile music-making potential — in a Sistema-like after-school programme, Construir Cantando (Building Song), now organized and propagated by the Scola Cantorum Foundation.
Like El Sistema, Construir Cantando is aimed at children in at-risk areas, a.k.a. slums. In Venezuela, the programme goes as far as to help children who have never been officially registered as people to get their papers in order, and get them started in school.
Unlike El Sistema, which is entirely funded by the state, the Foundation relies largely on private donations for its operations. (Guinand calls Sistema founder José Antonio Abreu a “genius” for not only getting it organized under government auspices, but in managing to, so far, successfully navigate the quasi-dictatorial regime of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.)
So many people in other parts of the world have been justifiably enchanted by the El Sistema model, but have not been able to convince governments to provide Sistema-like support.
Guinand, on the other hand, has shown how a network of effective music education can be built on private resources in Latin America, where there is not much of a middle class to turn to for a cloud of small donations.
The Scola Cantorum model is, in fact, much closer to what we’re getting with the Regent Park School of Music (where I will be teaching and also accompanying the choir, starting tomorrow), Moshe Hammer’s Hammer Band, Sistema Toronto and several other groups that work with children in the city’s “priority” neighbourhoods for at-risk children.
Here a video of Construir Cantando’s work (it’s in Spanish, but you don’t need to understand the language to get the gist of what’s going on).
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
