Teacher Fabio Chavez leads a children’s orchestra in a slum built upon garbage. The Landfill Harmonic orchestra gets its name from the word ‘philharmonic,’ which means ‘music loving.’ Chavez brings his love of music and a passion for social change to the kids of Cateura, a town outside the capital of Paraguay that is built upon a landfill.
Every day 1,500 tons of trash are dumped in Cateura. The 2,500 families that live around and on top of this garbage suffer from pollution, poverty, drug and alcohol problems, and a lack of proper education for their children. Most of the people there struggle to make a living by separating garbage for recycling companies, and children often do much of this dangerous work.
Chavez says that the price of a violin for these children would cost what a house costs in Cateura, but this didn’t stop him. He turned to local garbage pickers to hunt down various pieces of trash in order to create musical instruments from them. Violins and cellos are made from oil drums, saxophones are made from water pipes and keys, and guitars are made from cans. With these instruments, the kids play everything. Their musical repertoire runs the gamut from Beethoven to the Beatles.
There’s a famous English expression that says one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But this story isn’t just about the value of things, but also the value of people. Chavez says, “People realize we shouldn’t throw away trash carelessly. Well, we shouldn’t throw away people either.” The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra shows us that the garbage we create doesn’t just affect faceless people. It affects real people like the young girl featured in this video, who says, “Without music, my life would be worthless.”
References:
https://www.unicef.org/paraguay/
http://www.landfillharmonicmovie.com/#get-involved
Teacher Fabio Chavez loves music and brings his love of music to the children of Cateura. It is a town outside the capital of Paraguay. The people of Cateura live on top of a landfill.
Every day 1,500 tons of trash are dumped in Cateura. The 2,500 families that live near this garbage suffer a lot. There are pollution, poverty, drug and alcohol problems. There is also a lack of education for their children. Most of the families there struggle to make a living. They separate garbage for recycling companies. Children often do much of this dangerous work.
Chavez believes in social change. He has created a special music group for the children of this town.
Chavez says that the price of a violin for these children would cost what a house costs in Cateura. This didn’t stop him. He turned to local garbage pickers to hunt down various pieces of trash. They use this trash to make musical instruments. They made violins and cellos from oil drums. They made saxophones from water pipes and keys. And they made guitars from cans. With these instruments, the kids play everything. Their music practice runs the gamut from Beethoven to the Beatles.
There’s a famous English expression that says one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But this story isn’t just about the value of things, but also the value of people. Chavez says, “People realize we shouldn’t throw away trash carelessly. Well, we shouldn’t throw away people either.” The children of Cateura show us that the garbage we create doesn’t just affect faceless people. It affects real people like the young girl featured in this video, who says, “Without music, my life would be worthless.”
References:
https://www.unicef.org/paraguay/
http://www.landfillharmonicmovie.com/#get-involved
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