Both personally and as Chairman of Australia21, I am
disappointed to hear that there is to be a spill of full-time positions at the
Australian National University’s wonderful School of Music, so that the 32
full-time staff have to apply for positions in a reduced establishment of 20.
Disappointed because I think we as a society should be
moving in the other direction – more engagement with music as high art – and I
have begun considering how to frame an Australia21 project that could examine
the social wellbeing benefits of the Venezuelan program known as El Sistema (“the
system”) and how the lessons from that might be applied in an Australian
context.
El Sistema is a publicly financed music education program in
Venezuela, founded in 1975 by economist and musician José Antonio Abreu under the name of Social
Action for Music.
El Sistema is a state foundation which watches over
Venezuela's 102 youth orchestras, 55 children’s orchestras and 270 music
centres, and the instrumental training programmes which make them possible.
While the organisation has 31 symphony orchestras, its greatest achievement is
the 310,000 to 370,000 children who attend its music schools around the country
where it is estimated that 70 to 90 percent of them come from poor
socio-economic backgrounds. The program
is known for rescuing young people in extremely impoverished circumstances from
the environment of drug abuse and crime into which they would likely otherwise
be drawn.
Interestingly, it has always been located under the wing of social
services ministries, not the Ministry of Culture, a fact which has helped it to
survive several changes of government, and political persuasions of government,
over a period of more than 30 years. We
are talking about classical music as a positive force for personal development
and a benefit to society, not simply as recreation, important as the enjoyment
aspect is. As Abreu himself puts it:
Music has to be recognized as an ... agent of social development in the
highest sense, because it transmits the highest values -- solidarity, harmony,
mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community and to
express sublime feelings.
A detailed account of El Sistema’s achievements and history,
including its spread to the United States and the United Kingdom, may be found
in the relevant Wikipedia entry. A video of Abreu talking about El Sistema on
the TED website on the occasion of being awarded the TED Prize may be accessed here,
and a June 2010 TED Blog post on the graduation in Boston of 10 young musicians
from the the El Sistema USA program at New
England Conservatory may be accessed here. These young
musicians were to spread out to seven centres across the United States and
establish “nucleos” – programs and centres that will “teach children to play music,
believe in themselves, and reach for their dreams”.
I would like to see Australia as one of the next to take up
El Sistema, but sadly, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction. To mix
the metaphors, we seem to see music as the icing on the cake, not as core
business. But for people “doing it tough”,
and especially their children, music offers great benefits and opportunities.
