El Sistema: Changing Lives Through Music

Bob Simon On Venezuela's Groundbreaking Musical Education Program

(CBS)  This segment was originally broadcast on April 13, 2008. It was updated on July 16, 2008.

What comes to mind when you mention Venezuela? Hugo Chavez probably, or oil, or baseball? What probably does not come to mind is classical music.

And yet, Venezuela is the home of a music program that’s so extraordinary it has been hailed as the future of classical music itself.

As correspondent Bob Simon first reported in April, it's called "el Sistema" - "the system" - and it’s all about children, about saving them - hundreds of thousands of children - through music.

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In the world of classical music, the Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra is unique. The musicians, kids mainly, are not graduates of some conservatory or music school - they're alumni of the school of hard knocks in the slums of Venezuela. And their orchestra is about the exuberance of youth.

It recently made its Carnegie Hall debut with Gustavo Dudamel, its celebrated young conductor.

Carnegie Hall was the last stop on the orchestra's first American tour, and a long way from its home in Venezuela. Many of the kids come from neighborhoods which are so poor, desperate and crime-ridden, that hope is often extinguished in children at an early age.

Instead, these kids travel the world, playing to sell-out audiences. The National Youth Orchestra and hundreds of others are the brainchild of Dr. José Antonio Abreu.

Asked if he remembers the night he first started, Dr. Abreu, told Simon through a translator, "We only had 11 children - rehearsing in cramped conditions. But I had the feeling that this was the beginning of something very big."

Abreu, a 69-year-old retired economist, trained musician, and social reformer founded "the system" in 1975 and has built it with religious zeal, based on his unorthodox belief that what poor Venezuelan kids needed was classical music.

"Essentially this is a social system that fights poverty," Abreu explained. "A child's physical poverty is overcome by the spiritual richness that music provides."

"So, music actually becomes the vehicle for social change?" Simon asked.

"Without a doubt," Abreu replied. "And that is what's happening in Venezuela."

Every afternoon, small children line up for free music lessons at their local branch of "the system."

Raphael Elster runs one of the branches. He told Simon children join the music program as young as two years old.

Two-year-olds start learning the basics, like rhythm, and the language of music. By the time they’re four, they're being taught how to play an instrument. By the time they're six or seven-year-old veterans, they're playing in orchestras.

"A regular kid who will play in two or three years, we make it happen in three, four months," Elster told Simon.

Asked how that's done, he said, "We work hard. And they love it."

[dadeed]

today, 0ct 12,2009, I tried to watch your 2 videos: El Sistema and Gustavo the Great but could not get them to play. Have they both been worn out? Can they be refreshed? I want to share them with other friends. Thank you. DD

[scrollworks]

Everyone told me about this story on El Sistema when it aired last summer, but I didn't see it until yesterday. I'm inspired all over again to bring a program like this to Birmingham, AL. In Jan 2007, I began donating my retirement and then all my savings to start Scrollworks--$53,000 so far. We teach free music lessons to anyone who walks in the door at two locations. Our goal, though, is to train young musicians so that they can participate in our youth orchestras. We have made great progress. We're teaching over 300 students a week this summer. In the fall we will be revamping our program at an inner city elementary school to more closely follow El Sistema's model--a 'music intensive' after school at least two days a week. Bringing El Sistema to the US is hard work but it is so worth it!
Jeane Goforth
CEO, Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Central Alabama
700 8th Ave W, Birmingham, AL 35204
205-908-8843
http://www.myorch.org/
http://metroyo.blogspot.com/
http://jeane-metroyo.blogspot.com/

[daina520]

For those of you passionate to bring El Sistema to the world, please join the Causes page (http://apps.facebook.com/causes/290357), give & help spread awareness for this incredible initiative.

[leatherider]

My generation was one of the lucky ones -- public schools provided us with music appreciation classes, drama, chorus, band, orchestra . . . and we are the better for it. The Arts have provided uncountable hours of both pleasure and meditation over the years. Music is truly the universal language.

Unfortuantely, as mentioned in an earlier posting, arts programs are the first to suffer from budget cuts as less and less federal funds are alloted to our public schools. And yet our polititians still wonder why school dropouts and violence are ever on the increase while our position among the world''s educated nations continues to plummet.

[nrwisdom]

I would also like to know where to send a donation! Please give us an address! I have a clarinet and a flute I would love to send them!

[daina520]

For those of you passionate to bring El Sistema to the world, please join the Causes page (www.causes.com/music4kids), give & help spread awareness for this incredible initiative. You can donate also here: http://elsistemausa.org/support-a-fellow.

[smehary]

I would like to know how/where to donate money and /or instruments.

[flreason]

Anyone involved in music and the arts knows their power. Unfortunately, most Americans miss that experience. Arts programs are the first things to be cut when school budgets get tight. If you want to convince your school administrators why music is worth funding, check out this web site...Reasons to Study Music:
http://www.winstonmusic.net/instructionreasons.htm

[r_c_greene]

Neurological research is now showing that the potential for processing sound as music (and music as a sophisticated language of human experience) is held in every brain, but it must be developed early for best results. Also there is longstanding evidence that very early music training improves the entire vestibular system making general learning easier and more productive. There is also long-standing evidence that a child%u2019s basic notions about the world and how to live in it are set by the age of six. So Dr. Abreu%u2019s notion of social change through classical music is not simply sentiment and wishful thinking; it is reality. Elster said that popular music for these children is associated with bad things %u2013 drunkenness, violence %u2013 but that classical music and creative learning create a new and better world for them. If this is true, then the immense %u201Cheadlock%u201D that pop music and pop culture have on both the young and the old in the US presents the most daunting challenge for us here. Would children be able to give up all the junk of pop culture for a relatively regimented twelve hour a day immersion in what many think of as the culture of the elite oppressor? Would parents be willing to give up control of their children%u2019s notions of the world? We can only hope.

[r_c_greene]

What a great story! And, yes, my wife and I are ready, with everyone else who posted comments, to give money, instruments and even time to support this program. I have a feeling that many who commented have spent many, many, many hours, days, and years trying to change and improve the lives of young people in the USA through classical music. I dare say there are many more children learning to play instruments in this country that there are in Venezuela, and there are quite a few programs for inner-city children here (the most famous being Roberta Guaspari''s program in Harlem). So what is the difference in Venezuela? Perhaps the extreme poverty and lack of hope in which the Venezuelan poor are living create a backdrop that intensifies the good that serious music-making can do for the human spirit. Perhaps it is the dramatic triumph over great odds through the initial vision and the persistence of one person. I was struck by the comment by Dr. Abreu who founded the program, that music was indeed a vehicle for social change. Raphael Elster, one of the branch directors, said that the children spend almost 12 hours a day, six days a week, in %u201Cthe system.%u201D This means that the children spend most of their early lives listening to, and learning how to participate in, sophisticated musical experiences. Would Americans accept such a system?

[tonkacoco]

I have a perfectly good trombone, in a case, which I would willingly donate to one of these organizations along with a briefcase of music??