La Rinconada

Yesterday I was privileged to have an amazing tour through the nucleo of La Rinconada. La Rinconada is an area in the southwest of Caracas with sprawling and dangerous shantytowns. The nucleo here is one of El Sistema's oldest, and functions in a government run school space. I went there with a comission of El Sistema teachers, who are realizing a project of evaluation of El Sistema. They are currently developing a system of evaluation to be able to apply to all the nucleos, then they will visit nucleos all over the country, to assess how the music programs are developing and where they can direct funds to (supplies, infrastructure, teachers, etc).

The nucleo of La Rinconada was the first to be evaluated in a test run, the teachers are still revising the evaluation forms. As part of the assessment, we got to see all of the different groups of the nucleo perform a few songs for us. Then, with the woodwind teachers, we individually assessed a sample of the woodwinds of the orchestras. (of around the 1,000 kids we must have seen, there was only one oboe!)

We saw about 13 different groups perform, and it was stunning. We got to see groups from 2 years old with their parents, to 3 year olds banging on drums, to various different size and level orchestras. I'm so glad I took pictures! There was a lot to remember!

There are so many children at La Rinconada that the nucleo lacks some of the resources it would need. One of the orchestras did not have stands or music, so everything they learn is by memorization:

This is the performance of the oldest youth orchestra there, see caricatures of famous composers behind the conductor! They played Tchaikovsky's Slavonic March for us. (El sistema has a standardized repertoire for orchestras of each level-there are 4-to play from. However, we also heard some arrangements and original compositions of the teachers at La Rinconada-teachers can address individual needs that way.)


There was even a group of students learning traditional Venezuelan instruments and folk music-the teacher, who had taught all of the instruments, including flute, is blind.

The most moving performance by far was that of the "orquesta de papel," the paper orchestra, of students 6-8 years old. I of course at first had no idea what paper orchestra meant, but learned that there are so many students, that some do not yet have instruments, but start their learning on their parent-made cardboard instruments. With these instruments they can learn proper positions and posture, until they can get real instruments. Their performance involved singing and dancing. Here's a minute of it. (The lyrics-Today we come with lots of happiness to present to you a new beautiful paper orchestra. Let's start by naming all the different instruments you see in our paper orchestra-violas, cellos, violins...*thanks sebas for the correction here) When they finished, they gently put all the instruments into a big box. No need for protective cases.

Incredible. Besides that, I'm regularly teaching at San Antonio, and doing more of the same-going to concerts, playing ultimate, trying to schedule meetings. I miss you all very much, please write and find me on Skype or Facebook!