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Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela were a big hit at the Proms. Picture: Nobely Oliveros |
Could Shostakovich save Camden’s street kids?
SIMóN BOLíVAR YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF VENEZUELA
ROYAL ALBERT HALL
HIDDEN behind the Georgian facades of 52 to 58 Grafton Way, behind Warren Street Tube station, is the cultural headquarters of the Venezuelan Embassy.
It includes the Simón Bolívar Hall, named, like the astonishing Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela that played for the first time at the Proms on Sunday, after the great Latin American liberator who led the uprisings against Spain in the early 19th century.
The orchestra is leading a unique ‘uprising’ of children from the poorest slums through music.
The National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, known simply as El Sistema, is a radical social project founded in 1975 by the social crusader Jose Antonio Abreu.
He shares a similar vision to Henry Wood, founder of the Proms, that classical music is not just for the upper classes and the rich, but contains a truly democratising message.
Life can be changed and fulfilled even where drug addiction, crime and despair prevail, if children can be brought into an orchestra to play the overwhelmingly European classical repertoire.
The skills learned through the discipline, respect and teamwork of music give them the chance to escape the poverty cycle. Some 270,000 young Venezuelans play in 220 youth orchestras from the Andes to the Caribbean.
They come from desperate shanty towns, not music conservatoires.
They spend six afternoons a week intensively studying classical music, practising Beethoven and Brahms while their less-fortunate peers learn to steal and shoot. And it works, as we heard at Sunday’s Prom.
This enterprise, combining real talent and radical social action, is exploding the tired prejudices about classical music’s supposed elitism, prejudices still peddled here by our politicians who merely talk of the ‘culture change’ needed to address violent crime, drugs and alcohol that afflict our youth, but show no understanding of what that really means.
Worse, the pittance provided for schemes that help is under constant threat and is now likely to be siphoned off altogether into the 2012 Olympics.
Tell it to Gordon Brown. Every Westminster politician should have been dragged to this concert to witness what such music can achieve.
The vitality, urgency and passion of 250 young musicians, all under 25, playing as one, their rapt faces, their concentration and discipline, extraordinary rhythmic excitement and youthful charm were life-enhancing.
Their performance of the Shostakovich 10th symphony conveyed an understanding of its political message, by young people who know deprivation and suffering first-hand. They play as if their lives depend on it – as in some cases they do. They held the audience in thrall.
Their conductor, 26-year-old Gustavo Dudamel, a rising star in the music world, is a product of El Sistema, where he began as a violinist. He too sees music as ‘social saviour’. His passion and electrifying communication with the musicians has won praise and support from leading conductors Claudio Abbado and Sir Simon Rattle. Rattle sees it “not only as a question of art, but deep down as a social initiative. It has saved many lives, and will continue to save them”.
The evening ended with an astonishing, choreographed encore party: the lights dimmed briefly, coming up to reveal a riot of colour, the orchestra having changed into jackets of gold, blue and red, Venezuela’s national colours. They don’t just play encores – traditional swinging Latin American music – they leap up and dance to them, sometimes in sections, sometimes all together, twirling their instruments in the air as they play. It was sensational.
Their visit to the Edinburgh Festival persuaded the Scottish Arts Council to establish a pilot scheme on the Venezuelan model in one of this nation’s most deprived housing schemes.
We have similar problems right here in Camden. Perhaps Camden’s admirable Peter West, who does so much to bring music to children in the borough’s schools, could get together with the Venezuelan cultural centre in Camden and introduce a “sistema” here in Camden.
Their Grafton Way base was originally a row of houses built in 1793 by the firm of Robert and James Adam. Number 58 was once home to Francisco de Miranda, another Hispano-American revolutionary, visited there by Bolívar in 1810. The house is marked with a British Council plaque put up in 1942 and is a listed building; at the corner of Fitzroy Square, there is also a statue of Mnewsletteriranda.
The Venezuelan Government acquired the complex in 1978. They commissioned the British architect Boyd Auger to restore the Miranda house as a museum, with advice from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The rear of the other houses was completely rebuilt to provide the Simón Bolívar Hall, a multi-media cultural centre offering a programme of art exhibitions, concerts, film, theatre as well as literary and academic events.
Opened in 1986, it showcases Ibero-American culture, and also welcomes and fosters co-operation with British cultural organisations.
Many of their concerts and other events are free and can be found listed on the web at: www.venezlon.co.uk
HELEN LAWRENCE
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