The Voices project, or the Venezuelan seed

In 2004, in the district of Gràcia, sixteen children started up the project Voces y Música para la Integración (Voices and Music for Integration), an initiative with which the conductor Pablo Gonzalez revived, in Barcelona, the theory and practice of music of the famous National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela.

The Voces project, headed by Venezuelan musician Pablo González, is based on work with the voice, and in a secondary phase, collective instrumental practice. One of its social aims is to integrate the children of families from elsewhere into local life.

When the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra was not yet what it is today, i.e. a symbol of social integration through the values of music, Jose Antonio Abreu was already plant­ing the seeds of a great project in his students. Almost from out of nowhere, from the grass-roots, from the provinces, without any resources, without any precedent, he instilled an ambitious dream among the first young people that worked with him – the dream of building an orchestral centre for children and young people in every city in the country, next to the church and the town hall: places which Abreu calls núcleos (cores) and which form the basis of the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, known worldwide as El Sistema (the System).

Since its inception, Maestro Abreu’s sensitivity has been focused on conveying to his students the importance of music as a socialising phenomenon. Therefore, each one of them, besides playing, has always had the option of forming a new orchestra, of dedicating their time to creating a grassroots awareness of music in underprivileged places scourged by poverty and marginalisation, and taking music to them as a social rescue tool. They say that Abreu once had a seventeen-year-old who had done time for bank robbery and major crimes brought before him. “I am going to give you the chance to change your life; I’m going to give you a clarinet,” he said. “I want you to study in El Sistema.” “And aren’t you afraid I’ll steal the clarinet?” asked the kid. “You won’t steal it, because it’s yours.”

The same desire for inclusion was what led the Venezuelan musician Pablo Gonzalez to start the Voices and Music for Integration project in Barcelona. It was in 2004, in Gràcia, under the auspices of the Sant Felip Neri Oratory. This was how sixteen children became the founders of what is now the seed of the Venezuelan System implemented in Barcelona. The initial idea was to include children from other countries. At that time, the wave of immigration was huge, and serious problems were beginning to arise inside and outside schools. Why not design a programme like the youth orchestras in Venezuela, but with the aim of uniting children and families from abroad with others from here? Nine years on, lack of integration is still due, more than ever, to economic reasons; the status of many families has changed and children have to adapt. “What better way of facing up to the new situation by singing, playing and having fun?” Pablo tells us that he used to watch many of the children who are now in the orchestra playing football in the local square, until one day they stopped him and told him they wanted to study flute, violin or bass. “After that we meet the family, the parents, and go to knock on doors if need be. Far from the idea of creating a ghetto with specific characteristics, here we have children from all over the place. When we play we are all equal. There are children of doctors who could afford a music school but would rather be with us.”

Six years with the Simón Bolívar Orchestra

Pablo González had the privilege of sharing six years of rehearsals with José Antonio Abreu in the Simón Bolívar Orchestra. “When he explained musical phrasing to us it used to come with a complete philosophy. For Abreu, any musical note can transmit. What you need to know is what that phrase means, and put all your feelings into it to express it, otherwise you might be able to play but will never communicate. The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, for example, when invited to conduct the New York Conservatory, was the first composer to allow black musicians into a conservatoire, at a time when it was thought that black people could not play the violin for biological reasons! Only this kind of stance, driven by a certain radicalism, could beget a work such as the New World Symphony. While the children are here making music we also try to remind them what is happening on the other side.”

Captivated by the instrument, Pablo entered the núcleo in his city, Maracay, at the tender age of twelve. “When I started out they gave me a cello and put me into the orchestra. Just two months later we had a meeting with Maestro Abreu in the Caracas Polyhedron Arena. Imagine, twenty kids from the provinces in a stadium full of people to play with an orchestra of 500 musicians. ‘We are not needed here’ I thought! But we were all important for the Maestro and the system. We played Beethoven’s Fifth.”

Basically, the only thing the Voices project pursues is to create youth orchestras that sound better and better and let the kids have fun. Work is based initially on singing and then performing with the instrument collectively. The first time they come in, the kids walk out singing with their classmates. So they are given the chance to participate immediately, to be in the concerts and see society in a different light.

Pablo Gonzalez got involved the local grassroots of the Venezuelan youth orchestra set-up when he was aged just twelve. In the picture he practises the cello with one of his students in Barcelona.

Musical points of reference

It was at one of these concerts in Les Basses Civic Centre where the District Councillor fell in love with the project and offered the centre to the cause. The project also has sites at Roquetes (where other initiatives have been running for some time now, such as the Roquetes Nou Barris Symphonic Band), Ciutat Meridiana (where there are virtually no music schools), and Sant Andreu. The idea is to grow and turn these places into points of reference for children, where they can form their own groups (chamber orchestras, choirs, etc.) and feel that they are part of the project with new initiatives (hip hop, musical theatre, etc.)

It was during Barcelona’s Mercè festival in 2011 that Ana’s seven-year-old twin daughters, Barbara and Fabiola, on the violin and cello respectively, got their chance. “When we saw them we were stunned.” It was a Sunday lunchtime. It was raining. The whole choir was on the stage that had been set up in the middle of Plaça de Catalunya. They got in contact immediately and started out with awareness-raising and singing. Two months later they had chosen an instrument and joined the A orchestra. Today we are watching them rehearsing with the B orchestra. Everyone is preparing for the concert they will give in the Auditorium of Barcelona on 10 May with the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra (OBC), together with the kids from Xamfrà, another educational project that has been using music as a tool for social transformation in the Raval district since 2005.

Besides the OBC, more and more musicians are collaborating with these projects. Two years ago, Natalia Smirnoff, violinist with the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, contacted Les Basses as a volunteer. Little did she think that she would meet Pablo there, whom she had played with for four years at Simón Bolívar. “I greeted him and confessed that I felt as if I was in one of the núcleos.” They are one of the first generations of musicians produced by El Sistema. Later it produced such famous names as the young conductor Gustavo Dudamel, aged thirty-two, director of the Simón Bolívar since 1999 and one of the standard bearers of El Sistema, a framework that has created several products (music groups) to export Venezuela’s national identity and culture. Its success proves that when a country understands what its wealth is, it can export it with results that surpass expectations.

We might say that belonging to the Simón Bolívar Orchestra is the highest goal within Venezuela’s Sistema, and only the best make it. Being at the top of the pyramid means being a role model for 350,000 children and more than 180 núcleos all over the country. While you need to be really good to get in, there is no minimum age limit. Natali knows children who joined at the ages of twelve and thirteen. Those who don’t make it give classes in the núcleos or form new ones, because youth orchestras are constantly developing.

“What really matters”, he explains, “is that when you listen to a núcleo from a neighbourhood in one of Venezuela’s provinces and then you listen to the Simón Bolívar, you know for sure that one day the orchestra will sound just like it. Because it isn’t just about music; it is also about ideology.” People have tried to export the model across the world. France is one of the few countries where it has failed to gel because the priority there is to focus on finding the best students from the conservatoires in order to produce orchestras that sound good. The essence is lost. “Many people we have met, who are now soloists and conductors of the best orchestras in the world, would not be where they are today had it not been for music. That is why one day we would like to have a great youth orchestra in Barcelona, a professional orchestra born of our own system.”