In 2021, I published my book Rethinking Social Action Through Music, which laid out both an ethnographic study of the Red de Escuelas de Música (Network of Music Schools) of Medellín, Colombia, and a broader case for reforming the international field of which it is part, centred on Venezuela’s El Sistema. Since I completed the book early that year, a number of developments have added weight to my arguments for rethinking social action for music. Just days after its publication, a sexual abuse scandal broke in El Sistema, and the story was published by the Washington Post and other international media. In reality, this was nothing new: I had called attention to this issue in 2014, but my warnings had been dismissed. This time, the media attention forced El Sistema to respond and take action. This scandal only reinforced my arguments about the need for change; institutional sexual abuse is a symptom of deep dysfunction.
Also in 2021, El Sistema was at the centre of a controversy when it broke the record for the world’s largest orchestra. This event was organised by the government as a propaganda event just before the elections – another example of the overt politicisation of music education in Venezuela. Moreover, it was organised in the depths of the pandemic – an indefensible act for a supposed social project, making it clear that the wellbeing of young musicians was a lower priority than political goals and institutional pride. A controversy arose in Venezuela as a result.
El Sistema’s reputation suffered a further blow in 2022. Fifteen years earlier, the IDB had lent El Sistema $124 million to build seven regional centres, arguing that the program’s top priority should be decentralisation. However, the centres were never built, as I have been reporting since 2014. In 2022, a team of Venezuelan journalists published a detailed report on the non-existent music centres and the missing millions of dollars. El Sistema may have produced world-class musicians, but it has also produced world-class institutional and ethical failures.
For a long time, there has been strong resistance to critical thinking and change in the international field of social action for music. However, recent scandals in Venezuela have led some programs in other countries to distance themselves from El Sistema, for example by removing mentions of the Venezuelan program from their publicity material. Six months after publicly criticising El Sistema over the sexual abuse scandal, Sistema England closed its doors. In the field, the shortcomings of the Venezuelan program are increasingly recognised, albeit largely in private, and mindsets and practices are beginning to shift away from its approach. For example, Sistema Toronto in Canada has a social curriculum. Learning is organised around a monthly theme, such as teamwork, listening, respect, problem solving, responsibility, organisation, communication or leadership. During the month, students explore and discuss what the concept means and how it applies to music and the music school, as well as to society in general. This approach has nothing to do with El Sistema. Another example is Sister Cities Girlchoir (in Philadelphia), which says it is inspired by El Sistema but has taken its patriarchal model and turned it on its head, creating a program designed to empower girls.
The winds of change are reaching even the heart of the field. The Hilti Foundation funds El Sistema and close allies like Iberacademy in Colombia and Sinfonía por el Perú. In my book, I wrote: “Change in SATM would undoubtedly be spurred on significantly if major funders took proper account of the problems with the orthodox model revealed by published academic research and gave more support to innovation.” A few months later, Hilti publicly recognised the need for systemic change in the field, pointing to the lack of relevant teacher training as a key problem. Hilti created the Academy for Impact through Music (AIM) as an “innovation lab,” with the aim of improving the quality of teaching. The director of the academy was highly critical of conventional teaching for restricting students’ agency and community building. She also spoke of the need to design programs around students’ needs and not just musical outcomes, as is often the case. The academy’s website states one of its principles as: “We challenge unquestioned acceptance of the status quo,” and it goes on: “we must dare to question what we are actually achieving.” These statements may seem unremarkable, but they are significant coming from a major funder that has historically supported the most iconic and mainstream programs, including El Sistema. Now even the status quo is questioning the status quo.
Meanwhile, significant changes are taking place in the wider music education sector. One issue that is high on the current agenda is youth voice. In the UK, the main funder of socio-musical projects, Youth Music, does not support projects unless they have real structures in place to centre on the voices of young people and enable shared decision-making. Youth voice is now a central theme in contemporary thinking about the arts and social development.
Hilti Academy has jumped on this train. It has also adopted a closely related theme: child protection. It is surely no coincidence that shortly after the sexual abuse scandal in El Sistema, safeguarding become a prominent aspect of the academy’s work. On its website, the academy acknowledges weaknesses in the field of social action for music in relation to this issue, such “real-life fear to speak out or whistleblow […] A lack of safe spaces for teachers, students and others to share concerns and fears,” “unclear protocols and channels for referring cases,” and “the power imbalances of the teacher-student dynamic, the deification of artists and the rarified pursuit of artistry as excuses for abuse.” Once again, Hilti is at the heart of the status quo in this field, so the fact that it acknowledges these problems and commits to addressing them is a significant, if overdue, development.
Another issue related to youth voice, and one that is becoming increasingly important internationally, is culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. At the heart of this pedagogy are students’ experiences, needs, and desires, and connection to their communities and cultures. It promotes horizontality, identifying learners and their communities as holders of meaningful cultural knowledge. This pedagogy is in turn related to another growing movement within music education: decolonisation and indigenisation. In 2020, a symbolic shift took place within ISME (the International Society for Music Education): the El Sistema Special Interest Group disappeared, and the Decolonising and Indigenising Music Education group was created.
These recent developments in the field of music education contrast markedly with the philosophy and practice of El Sistema, which has historically prioritised the voices of adults, neglected the protection of minors, and been profoundly vertical and Eurocentric. The centre of gravity of music education is shifting away from the El Sistema model. As progressive currents are consolidated, El Sistema looks ever less like the revolutionary initiative it claims to be and ever more like the legacy of the distant past that it really is. As each year passes, there are more reasons to rethink social action for music.
Progressive currents are influencing the field of social action for music as the influence of El Sistema wanes. For example, one of the chapters in Kaufman and Scripp’s book Music Learning as Youth Development refers to an El Sistema-inspired program in the United States that has adopted a Creative Youth Development (CYD) approach. CYD, a growing movement in North America, has two main pillars: it builds on the cultural and social assets of young people, and it is youth-driven. Yet this is the opposite of El Sistema, which is based on young people’s supposed deficits (its official mission is to “rescue children and young people from an empty, disoriented, and deviant youth”) and is driven by adults (who are responsible for this supposed rescue). As the US program’s director points out, adopting the principles of CYD required a change of mindset and educational model. The program continues to use the El Sistema label, which is undoubtedly good for marketing and funding, but it has made a sharp turn away from El Sistema’s approach and philosophy. This is rethinking in action.
Nonetheless, the picture today is ambiguous. On the positive side, rethinking and change are beginning to occur within the field, supported by wider developments in music education and academic research. The process is slow, which is not unusual in music education; but the idea that change is necessary is at the core of the Hilti Foundation’s academy, which means that this idea has moved from the academic margins to the centre of the field over the last decade. A good example of the positive side is Medellín’s Network of Music Schools, which has continued to evolve since my book was published. Around these examples, the tide of music education is turning.
On the other hand, historically there has been great resistance to change in the field, and that has not gone away. More specifically, there has been great resistance to critical thinking. Despite all the studies and evidence and scandals that have emerged in the last decade, and despite Hilti’s new statements about the importance of challenging the status quo and daring to question, critical research continues to be shunned and the spaces for public critical debate remain limited. The field has a serious problem of disinterest, denial and even dishonesty, even with its own research. I have written in detail about how the findings of the major Inter-American Development Bank evaluation of El Sistema were distorted in numerous ways by multiple stakeholders in order to make them appear more positive (Baker, Bull, and Taylor 2018). In 2018, the United Nations and the IDB participated in an event at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna that was advertised as “El Sistema: A Model of Social Inclusion for the World.” This was only a year after the IDB’s own evaluation had revealed that El Sistema had a low level of participation of poor children, pointing to exclusion rather than inclusion. That evaluation, which uncovered major weaknesses, should have been a spur to rethinking and change; instead, its findings were heavily spun in order to shower praise on the status quo. Five years later, many programs, funders, politicians, and journalists continue to treat El Sistema as a glowing success, despite the abundant published evidence to the contrary. There are even researchers who participate in this denial.
The problem is that social action through music has become a standard-bearer for governments, banks, corporations, cultural institutions, and the classical music industry, which has led not only to resistance to critique but also to a focus on purposes and practices that have little to do with social action. Let us recall the beginnings of this field: El Sistema was created to boost the symphony orchestra sector in Venezuela – its original constitution makes this clear, and it makes no mention of social action. So it is not surprising that social action through music has been adopted in many other countries as a tool to reproduce and commercialise the classical music sector. In such cases, social action is a kind of fantasy – but there are many who want to defend that fantasy, because it supports their interests. As a result, debate remains limited, at least in the public sphere. This picture illustrates the power of El Sistema as ideology: its global success has not been due to its results, which have been distinctly mixed, but rather to the attractiveness and usefulness of its narrative to powerful actors of many kinds. This is one of the biggest challenges that rethinking social action through music faces. Rethinking has contemporary educational practice and research on its side – but it is up against an ideology that is deeply entrenched in dominant institutions.
Also, rethinking appears to be limited to pockets in the international sphere. Although there are important examples in Latin American practice (such as Medellín’s Network and the Programa Social Andrés Chazarreta in Argentina) and theory (e.g. Carlos Miñana, Gabriela Wald, Guillermo Rosabal-Coto), and Colombia has seen lively public debate around this issue over the last year, many social action through music programs in the region seem largely untouched by critical debates that have taken place primarily in English and/or in academic spaces. I have published Spanish and Portuguese translations of my book (in open access format), but this is just a drop in the ocean of Latin American social action through music. Many continue to see El Sistema as a successful model and remain unaware of the serious problems that have been uncovered, even those that have been reported in the international press. This field is rooted in ideas about music and society that date back to the start of European colonialism in the 16th century, and in more recent times opinions have been shaped by waves of unfiltered propaganda about the so-called “Venezuelan musical miracle,” so rethinking its premises and practices is going to be a slow process.
Geoff Baker 
Something called The System has always sat uneasy in my belly, with its intimations of Orwellian patriarchal control. Thank you for your ever thoughtful and valuable work, and making the book open access where it can have a positive impact.
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