The article is primarily about the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, a youth orchestra in Paraguay that creates musical instruments from materials salvaged from a nearby landfill. It highlights the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the orchestra members and their journey from playing in their local community to gaining international recognition. The article also emphasizes the transformative power of music and education for the young musicians involved, showcasing their performances and dreams for the future.
What is this article primarily about?
Members of a youth orchestra in Cateura enjoy playing a varied repertoire of musical pieces.
An environmental technician who came to Cateura for work teaches music lessons to students.
An orchestra in Cateura uses discarded materials to create instruments for its young musicians.
The enormous landfill near Cateura provides jobs for recyclers who search for things to resell.
Turning Trash into Musical Treasure
News: World Beat
One by one, young musicians stroll into a food court, instruments on their lips or under their chins. A saxophone plays the first notes and is immediately joined by flutes and violins. The flash mob forms the chords of "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Diners smile in surprise, sway to the music, and take videos.
The musical group's motto appears on the backs of their black T-shirts: "El Mundo Nos Envía Basura, Nosotros Le Devolvemos Música"—"The World Sends Us Garbage, We Send Back Music." And if bystanders take a closer look, they will notice the peculiar instruments the group is playing.
If garbage grandmaster Oscar the Grouch had a favorite band, it would undoubtedly be the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura. This community in the South American country of Paraguay exists on the edge of a massive landfill. From the mountains of garbage come the parts and pieces used to construct the orchestra's instruments. Fans around the world have been won over by the ingenuity and spirit of this group that transforms trash into beautiful music.
Pride of Cateura
Asunción is the capital city of Paraguay. Every day, trucks deliver some 3 million pounds (1.36 million kilograms) of its waste to the landfill near Cateura. Many of the families there work as gancheros—recyclers. They comb through the rubbish in search of worthwhile stuff to sell.
In 2006, Favio Chávez came to Cateura to work as an environmental technician. Being a musician as well, Chávez taught music lessons to some of the local kids. Those lessons grew into a performance group, and soon there weren't enough musical instruments for all the young people who wanted to learn. Buying new horns and strings was out of the question—a new violin cost as much as a house in Cateura, Chávez explained.
Chávez met a local ganchero and carpenter, Nicolás "Cola" Gómez. Together, they conceived of a radical idea: to create instruments out of stuff salvaged from the landfill. Gómez experimented with various materials and designs, creating instruments that resembled and played like the real things. That's how the Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura was born.
These musical instruments are testaments to their makers' creativity and resourcefulness. Guitars are crafted from large dessert tins, and cellos incorporate oil drums. Cans and kitchen utensils are fashioned into violins, while coins, bottle caps, and house keys are attached to different-sized pipes to make saxophones, flutes, and clarinets. X-rays, plastic bowls, and packing tape become drums.
As the youth orchestra practiced, performed, and improved, it became the pride of Cateura.
Taking It on the Road
The story of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura gained international attention and spread like a hit song on social media. Before long, the group was flying around the world to perform. It has played in concert halls in Argentina, Great Britain, Japan, and the United States—more than 50 countries in all. The musicians' repertoire ranges from Beethoven and Mozart to the Beatles and Coldplay, and along the way, they have backed up such musical megastars as Stevie Wonder, Metallica, and Megadeth.
The Recycled Orchestra continues to tour, and the music school in Cateura has grown to some 300 students. For many of the orchestra's members, learning to play has been a life-changer. It has shown them how education and music can open doors to new possibilities and dreams. Some of their stories are told in the award-winning documentary Landfill Harmonic.
In the film, teen violinist María Ríos says, "My dream is to become a professional violin teacher. I want to have lots of students here from the community and give them the opportunity to dream like I have had."
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