The project is inspired by the Paraguayan Cateura orchestra, which has given concerts all over the world.
“It has changed my life a lot.” Of gypsy origin, Cristina never imagined herself playing the violin. Like her, young people at risk of social exclusion in Madrid they have found a “family” in an orchestra that makes music out of waste.
A colorful fiddle from soda cans, a skateboard as a bass and a kettledrum drum plastics sound in perfect harmony. It is the Music of Recycling, a project that seeks to give “second chances” both to waste and to underprivileged children in the Spanish capital.
“I lived in shacks (precarious houses)” and “the truth is that knowing the orchestra has opened up a lot of world to me (…) I had never left my neighborhood, I had never even been to the center of Madrid,” he tells the AFP Cristina Vázquez, who at 18 is concertmaster of the orchestra: first violin and second in command after the director.
“I am very happy, because my life has changed a lot,” says the young woman with long black hair, light eyes and dark complexion, who, not very convinced, entered at the age of 12, since it was part of her school curriculum at the humble neighborhood of Vallecas. Now he doesn’t even consider leaving the orchestra.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be professional music (…) but what I want is to continue teaching younger children ” in the orchestra, he says, referring to the task performed by the most veteran. “You take a lot of pride when a little girl comes over and says, ‘When I grow up I want to be like you.’
Escape from trouble
For Luis Miguel ‘Luismi’ Muñoz, the orchestra allowed him to get his adolescence back on track in a neighborhood like Vallecas, with high dropouts and school absenteeism.
“Instead of getting together with friends, I felt that I was more interested in listening to music, playing it, and little by little I have taken it as a way of life,” says this tall 18-year-old, with short and bleached hair, For those who belong to the orchestra “is to be with your family, doing what you like the most.”
Music “has been my escape from life’s problems,” explains Luismi, who says that in a few years he says he sees himself as a teacher of “the little ones” in the orchestra and a professional “flamenco percussionist”.
After a stoppage due to the covid-19 pandemic, the orchestra had planned to offer a concert this Thursday in Madrid, but given the escalation of infections, the organization postponed it until next year.
Springboard to a musical career
This social project of the environmental NGO Ecoembes is inspired by the Cateura orchestra of Paraguay, in which poor children make instruments out of garbage from a landfill next to which they live. They have given concerts around the world, including in Madrid.
In 2014, Ecoembes brought the Cateura orchestra to Madrid and asked himself: “Why not here? Social problems and economic problems are much closer to us ”, he recalls the Argentine Victor Gil, director of the Music of Recycling, created that year.
The first concert came just four months later and “the boys could not go more or less played four notes,” says Gil, who in a recent rehearsal in Vallecas played his “skateboard-bass” while encouraging young people to keep the animated rhythm of a piece.
Today, after having played in several cities in Spain, “We already have four boys who are studying scholarships, in official music schools and in public conservatories“, Rejoices.
Currently, more than 100 children from Vallecas and from foster homes of the NGO Aldeas Infantiles receive music classes within the project.
Megadeth at premiere of documentary about instrument orchestra with recycled trash
The luthier is Fernando Soler, third generation of a family of instrument makers, who with cans, cutlery, wooden boxes, and parts of evicted instruments manufactures violins, guitars and cellos, seeking to make them as real as possible, so that they “do not stop” children in his musical learning.
Soler wants to resume the workshops on his trade that he gave to young people, suspended by the pandemic, since the objective is “that the recycling luthier in the future be one of them.” (I)
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