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| 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).
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| 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.”
