El Sistema
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| Formation | 1975 |
|---|---|
| Founder | José Antonio Abreu |
| Type | non-profit |
| Purpose | Music education |
| Location |
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| Website | FESNOJIV official site |
El Sistema is a publicly financed voluntary sector music education program in Venezuela, founded in 1975 by Venezuelan educator, musician and activist José Antonio Abreu which later adopted the motto Social Action for Music. To say it another way, it is "free classical music education that promotes human opportunity and development for impoverished children," as quoted from the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. By 2015, according to official figures, El Sistema consisted of over 400 music centers and 700,000 young musicians. The program provides 4 hours of musical training and rehearsal per week day after school, as well as work on the weekends.
It all began with 11 students in an underground parking garage under the leadership of José Abreu. For many years its official name was Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, (FESNOJIV), which is sometimes translated into English as "National Network of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela". It has recently changed to Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar (FMSB) but it is still widely known by the FESNOJIV acronym.
Abreu said: "Music has to be recognized as an agent of social development, in the highest sense because it transmits the highest values – solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community, and to express sublime feelings."
Abreu has navigated the program for the past 35 years through ten different administrations, flourishing "with the backing and material support of seven consecutive Venezuelan governments, ranging across the political spectrum from center-right to the current leftist presidency of Hugo Chávez"..(although).."he is careful to keep the Sistema separate from partisan politics". Combining political shrewdness with religious devotion, Abreu has dedicated himself to an utopian dream in which an orchestra represents the ideal society, and the sooner a child is nurtured in that environment, the better for all.
Gustavo Dudamel, current musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, had his beginnings in El Sistema. According to Dudamel, "music saved my life and has saved the lives of thousands of at risk children in Venezuela...like food, like health care, like education, music has to be a right for every citizen. Carlos Izcaray conductor of Alabama Symphony Orchestra is also a product of the El Sistema program as Alcides Rodriguez clarinetist of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra who has said that "the System was an open door to another dimension, a different world that I probably could have never seen."
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Wikipedia