Return to Caracas #1

Our beloved tequenos at the Tamanaco Hotel, Caracas

We returned to Caracas for our final week in Venezuela. We were hoping to meet with members of El Sistema senior management, members of the team responsible for research, evaluation, and formulating a plan for a new higher education institution, whilst also visiting the Simon Bolivar Conservatory. Unfortunately, as it was the week of municipal elections, the nucleos and the conservatory were closed (luckily we didn’t miss out as much as the last class of Fellows when Chavez died).

There are 250 staff (all Venezuelan) working at the head office of the Foundacion which runs El Sistema. We were able to meet with three out of the five members of senior management – Eduardo Mendez (Executive Director ), Valdemar Rodriguez (Deputy Executive Director) and, to our great delight, Dr. Abreu (Founding Director).

l to r: Tony Woodcock, Dr. Abreu, Leslie Wu Foley, Eduardo Mendez

First was the unassuming and utterly inspiring Eduardo Mendez. Eduardo grew up as a violinist in El Sistema, and is now head of the administration and management side of the program. He is one of the few who receives a lot of personal time and assistance from Dr. Abreu. For the first time we made our way to the buildings of the Fundamusical. He talked to us for about an hour, giving us more of an overview of the program and its goals rather than the details of how each nucleo operates that we had been concerned with so far doing our visits. Out of his discussion came three main themes of how he sees El Sistema: a different methodology, breaking boundaries and the importance of the El Sistema family.

A different, but not necessarily better methodology

Eduardo echoed many voices we heard that emphasised that El Sistema is not a musical ‘miracle’ but a result of many people working hard to serve the students together. He asked us to imagine how many teachers/hours/instruments would be needed to teach every child in the nucleo in the traditional Western methodology; “We would still be working on generation one!”

It was interesting to hear his summary of how El Sistema works: The program is based on collective teaching where private lessons do happen. This makes the process of teaching simpler but more time-consuming – students obviously progress more in four months with four hours of teaching a day than they would in one year. Teachers surround the students all the time, so they can feel that they are getting better every day and progressing quicker. In addition they are not getting bad habits at home that have to be dealt with, the students are motivated by participating in concerts on Saturdays and they experience the pride of their parents seeing them in uniform and receiving applause for their work. He also talked about taking advantage of the pace at which children can learn when they are young – he pointed out how a nine month old can learn how to use an IPad, and how that potential can lead to a performance of 7-12 year olds in the National Children’s Orchestra in Salzburg! (Eduardo was 17 when he played Mahler 1 to audition for the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, now it is used for preparation for National Children’s Orchestra.)

“We achieve precise, clear and direct objectives, using passion, motivation and methodology.” His challenge is to break down this passion and joy to the ground and make it work like a business, so that they can be as efficient as possible with the resources they have, serve as many children as possible and continue to serve the community with up to five concerts a week (in Caracas).

El Sistema applies and replicates its own methodology to facilitate the growth of the program and see more children served, but he pointed out the different motivations behind this to the way that Europe, North America and Asia see the nurturing of musicians; the major difference being the dual focus of community-building as well as the development of young musicians.

“We are here to provide opportunities for everyone, students and the audience who will become your allies for funds and networks. Communities are then built surrounding a common objective. Our objective is not to produce professional musicians, but our goals are to serve the needs of children and youth through music. We seek to get the most amount of children in the project – this is when we are helping to create a new human being. We still have a lot to learn as a community builder but all skills can be applied to help others. We are creating a new concept or ecology. The challenge is convincing the world that it is not better but different. A great example is that the very traditional New England Conservatory wants you to be here!”

Breaking barriers

Another striking feature of El Sistema is the focus on pushing boundaries – the sheer amount of students involved, the number of concerts occurring every week, the inclusion we have seen in the Special Needs programming and above all the expectations of what the students are capable of. The best example of this is the 1500 El Sistema students performing at the Salzburg Festival for three weeks; five programs of non-professionals performing as professionals at the highest level possible, and all the tickets were sold out six months before.

Of course the Simon Bolivar project will be continuing the massive expansion of the program, and Eduardo is instrumental in decisions determining how many more children are added to the program each month and in which city, the taking over of schools and community spaces, and expanding existing nucleos (although on our visits many seem to be already at bursting point with long waiting lists!)

El Sistema is now breaking the boundaries of the Venezuelan borders and inspiring many programs globally. Eduardo remarked that in 1975 Dr. Abreu told his students that their orchestra would take over the country with music and the world will look to Venezuela and want to imitate you. This prophecy is coming true, and following in this quasi-religious perspective, Eduardo stated that the work will be finished when all countries can do this work.

The Family

The sense of responsibility for the students and their well-being was a very common theme from the teachers and El Sistema leaders; “The program is the closest thing children have to family, they call the nucleo director or teacher when something is wrong”. In this way, strong emotional connections are created and the students become an integral part of El Sistema and how it functions: “they identify themselves with the program as they achieve results, human results and feel transformed as they enter the orchestra or nucleo – the principle objective of all this.”

Finally, Eduardo’s message to the Sistema Fellows – “You are part of the network, our achievements you should take and build on and vice versa; we are a group. This is free and you should feel part of the El Sistema family. Transmit this to all you will work with. Always believe in what you saw in Venezuela.”