Lesson from Venezuela

The idea that one can take guns and syringes out of the hands of disaffected youths and replace them with musical instruments, which they then delight to play, is so utopian that most people’s reaction was to laugh it off.

The idea that one can take guns and syringes out of the hands of disaffected youths and replace them with musical instruments, which they then delight to play, is so utopian that most people’s reaction was to laugh it off. Yet, as everyone knows, this is exactly what has been happening in Venezuela since 1975, and is still happening. The lives of many young people have been improved by the opportunities offered by El Sistema, and no doubt the mood in society as a whole has been vastly improved. If it really is possible to make this substitution, why wouldn’t it have?

What we in the UK know of this initiative has come in the form of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, which appeared at the Proms in 2007 and came back last year for a five-day residency at the South Bank Centre under its director Gustavo Dudamel, playing to an audience of 60,000. It is of course worth remembering that this orchestra is the tip of the pyramid of talent that the El Sistema project has uncovered, and that it could not exist without the 30 provincial symphony orchestras and 125 youth orchestras that feed it. In turn, these are supported by music schools that together involve 250,000 children in instrumental training programmes at any one time, almost all of them from extremely poor backgrounds.

All this costs money, which the Venezuelan government has been prepared to provide unstintingly, for many years. President Chávez and others before him have been quick to see the publicity advantages of this flagship enterprise, Chávez recently appearing on television to start new offshoots, and to encourage the documentary film industry that has grown up around the El Sistema story.