Trip To Barquisimeto

Hello everyone! I can't believe it's already mid-March, these last two months have overall been much better (and gone by much faster) than the first 4. I took another interesting trip, this time to Barquisimeto, the capital of Lara State (those of you following Venezuelan politics may know that Lara is getting a lot of news lately because the governor Henri Falcon just left the PSUV and it's been a scandal), and the neighboring city of Carora. Carora gets its own entry because the day was just that exciting.

Anyways, I traveled to Barquisimeto with Pietro, an Italian cellist who is also studying El Sistema. When I got there, we were immediately whisked to a vegan restaurant (yes, I did mean that) for lunch, which included fresh unsweetened fruit juices, an entree of a vegan version of Venezuelan pan de jamon, this traditional ham filled bread (but here made with soy), and cane-sweetened pies. I spent 3 days in the nucleo in Barquisimeto, seeing rehearsals and spending time with oboists.

This is the "compote" orchestra, where the smallest kids start their violin playing. They were about 3-5 years old, and played us a few songs. Beyond being adorable, the instructors told us that throughout the years they have been able to lower the age of when the kids start, and that as the program has gone on they learn more quickly-skills that used to take 1.5 years to teach now take only a year. One of the things I've seen a lot in nucleos is the necessity for improvisation-inventing and developing new curricula depending on the needs of the students.

One of the things Barquisimeto is most known for (besides being the birthplace of Dudamel) is its special needs music education program, the first in the country (since 1995). They have done an amazing job at developing curriculum for kids with all different kinds of needs, including transcribing music in braille to play in orchestra, and creating the famous "coro de manos blancos", or white hand choir. I wrote about them from my trip to Falcon. In Barquisimeto I was able to see a presentation of all the different special needs musical groups, which was being done for other professors from the state to work on creating programs there. It was really compelling and touching, and made me think of this: one of El Sistema's taglines is "hacemos inclusión a través de la música", we include through music, which previously I always associated with social class. However, these special needs kids made me reevaluate that, as the opportunity they have to study music allows them to be included in countless ways, and is such an amazing opportunity for their personal development.

The presentation included various recorder choir, percussion groups, bell choirs, piano performances and the Coro de Manos Blancos. Below is a video of a very special quintet, of blind young men who arrange Venezuelan melodies for 5 voices and various instruments (they played mandolin, quatro, and tambor while singing), and also compose their own music. Their musical abilities were quite astonishing, and here is a video of that.

I also went to a rehearsal and concert of the professional orchestra of Lara, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Lara. The oboists of the orchestra were the original founders, and this orchestra grew from the first youth orchestra of Barquisimeto, founded by a cellist who worked with Abreu. Ever since, Barquisimeto has been known throughout Venezuela as being a musical center. Also interestingly, these oboists studied with Hernan Jerez, the Chilean who worked with Peña in La Serena and fled to Venezuela with the coup. This story in my next entry.