Barquisimeto #5

Carora

The town of Carora is an exquisitely beautiful, if somewhat neglected, colonial town in the state of Lara. We were headed for the Cultural Centre, which has been in existence since 1965. It has been said that this was one of the first, if not the first, nucleo established right at the beginning of El Sistema history.

Rather than seeing the weekly afternoon programming, this was a chance to see the activities of a nucleo on a Saturday. We started by seeing the Initiation (beginners) orchestra. After watching them rehearse for a while, the conductor explained a bit about the orchestra: The children had been playing their instruments for six months, and had been playing as an orchestra for three months; they started by rehearsing for one and a half hours twice a week, and then two hours on the Saturday; originally they had started by putting the strings together and then adding a wind and percussion section. The conductor complained of not having enough teachers, and how he sometimes works by himself, which must be challenging in these early stages. The majority of the children were playing violins, perhaps it is to do with the instruments they have, or the instrument’s popularity. The teaching method they use with beginners involves listening and singing to start with, then reading the score and singing using solfege, before playing the melodies on their instruments.

The Fellows broke off into groups to teach individual or ensemble lessons, and I joined Tatjana and Megan at a violin sectional of the Children’s Orchestra. It was an absolute privilege to watch Tatjana lead this rehearsal very capably in her fluent Spanish, as they rehearsed a piece the group was familiar with and needed a few adjustments, and also a tricky piece they were just starting to learn. I stayed in the back row to help one girl who looked like she was the youngest of the group, and almost managed to keep up with the instructions in Spanish!

We were able to briefly see a rehearsal of the Youth Orchestra, under the guidance of another original member of the Simon Bolivar Orchestra, who had recently returned after a successful conducting career in Argentina. It made me wonder how successful El Sistema is at retaining the large amount of students who end up in their beginner orchestras every year. We kept on seeing large orchestras of children who had only been playing since the beginning of the academic year, but considering this happens every year, what percentage go on to the children’s and youth orchestras? It seems that record-keeping and assessment is haphazard and depends on the nucleo, so it would have been difficult to get an overall answer.