I recently published a feature article in Classical Music magazine entitled El Sistema at 50: the rise and fall (and rise again?) of Venezuela’s controversial music programme. You may need to register to read it, but it’s quick and free. Below is a Spanish translation of the article. *** El Sistema a los 50: Auge…
There has been a lot in my social media recently about the inglorious ways that the classical music sector has historically dealt with open secrets and concrete allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. The same themes keep coming up: a focus on protecting institutional reputations; trying whenever possible to keep offending teachers in place and…
The Journal of the Royal Musical Association has just published a review essay by Jane Isabelle Forner entitled “Classical Music’s Conflicted Futures: Perspectives on the Industry and Academia from Recent Scholarship.” I recommend it to those involved with classical music performance and education, and also to those interested in social action through music (SATM), as…
This week, the Guardian published a long article entitled “Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra at 50: is it time for brickbats or bouquets?” Despite the title’s implication of an even-handed assessment of pros and cons, there was never any doubt which way the article was going to fall, given that it was written by Marshall…
In 2024, Agrigento issued its first open call for proposals, as part of a new scheme entitled Innovar (“innovate” in Spanish). The aim of the scheme is to promote innovation in the field of music and social action in Latin America. For Agrigento, this was a pilot not only of an open call but also…
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been glued to Katherine Needleman’s Facebook page. In the wake of the NY Philharmonic’s sexual assault scandal, Needleman – a top US-based oboist – has become a kind of clearing-house for testimonies of abuse in the classical music and music education sectors. (See here for my earlier reflections…
On a much more positive note than my recent blog post about scandals and open secrets in the orchestral world, Agrigento’s Innovar scheme has provided seed-funding for 12 innovative projects in 2024 (which will run alongside several other new and ongoing projects funded through other lines). Read more below…
It’s been a bad week for orchestras. An old sexual assault scandal at the New York Philharmonic hit the headlines again. But what could have come and gone quickly as a “bad apple” story – one that was not even news – soon escalated into something much bigger, as it became clear that the rot…
Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community, by Kenneth J. Gergen, is a major work of scholarship in social psychology. It has a lot to offer the field of social action through music (SATM), despite saying nothing about it directly. In this essay, I’m going to put the two together. First, a few disclaimers. This will…
A recent psychological study (Hogan et al. 2023) found that intensive Sistema programs in the US brought no additional gains in executive functioning, self-perception, or attitudes toward school in young children, when compared to general music education (or classroom music). This finding is not a major surprise, given that it echoes an earlier Sistema study…
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…
I’m pleased to announce the publication of my article “The Third Way is Not The Only Way: Interrogating a Centrist Agenda for El Sistema Research,” in Music & Arts in Action. The article is open access. https://musicandartsinaction.net/index.php/maia/article/view/264 Abstract This article offers a critical response to the special issue of Music & Arts in Action on youth orchestras…
Hace un mes, el presidente Petro anunció que la primera dama, Verónica Alcocer, y el viceministro de cultura, Jorge Zorro, habían viajado a Venezuela para “ver el sistema orquestal venezolano en música clásica” y que pronto iba a arrancar “el sistema orquestal colombiano.” Cuando llegué a Venezuela en 2008 para empezar a investigar sobre El…
Another year, another Washington Post article about a sex scandal at a world-famous classical music education institution. This time, Juilliard; last year it was El Sistema. In both cases, the problem had been an “open secret” for decades before an investigation or public allegation triggered action. But there is one big difference between the stories:…
When I saw that Susan Hallam and Evangelos Himonides’ monumental new book “The Power of Music: An Exploration of the Evidence” had been published, I went straight to my area of specialism – El Sistema – to see how they handled it. It turned out to be quite a prominent theme in the book; a…
“The huge spiritual world that music produces in itself ends up overcoming material poverty.” These words, or variations on them, by El Sistema’s founder, José Antonio Abreu, are repeated reverently in countless media portrayals of the world-famous Venezuelan music program, including a series of propagandistic documentaries that began with Tocar y Luchar (2006). At last,…
Inclusion. Community. Youth voice. Sharing and empathy. Excellence of experience, not just of musical sound. These are commonplace ideas in the field of social action through music (SATM) and they were central themes of a public seminar on 17 March. But this was not a SATM event: it was a debate organized by the UK’s…
The Inter-American Development Bank identified El Sistema’s excessive centralization in Caracas as a key weakness when it became involved with the Venezuelan youth orchestra scheme in the late 1990s. In 2007, the bank made a loan to finance the construction of high-spec music centres in seven regional cities in order to decentralize the program. The…
Existe una narrativa de acción social por la música (ASPM) que resulta familiar en el Norte global: el programa orquestal venezolano El Sistema, creado en 1975, irrumpió en la escena musical clásica internacional en 2007 con el debut de la Orquesta Juvenil Simón Bolívar en los Proms, dando lugar a un movimiento global inspirado en…
In a recent study carried out in Colombia, Cespedes-Guevara and Dibben (2021) found that a year of training in a classical music instrumental program had no significant effect on prosociality or empathy. Their results echo those of other studies of similar programs, such as Alemán et al. (2017) on El Sistema in Venezuela, and Ilari…
As I was nearing the end of writing my book Rethinking Social Action Through Music, which focused on the Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín, I observed the 2020 edition of the program’s annual pedagogy seminar. I was so impressed that I put this event at the core of the book’s Afterword. I hailed…
There has been considerable media coverage of the sexual abuse allegations coming out of El Sistema. I wrote an article for Caracas Chronicles, and the site’s editors wrote a second one, available in both English and Spanish. There have been investigative reports in Clarín (Argentina), ABC (Spain), and BR-Klassik (Germany). The story has also been…
On 27 May, an article that I co-authored with William Cheng appeared in the Washington Post. It tackles a difficult subject that I have been investigating for a decade: sexual harassment and abuse within Venezuela’s El Sistema. The story was followed up by Norman Lebrecht on Slipped Disc. This is not the first time that…
Conflict is a good thing. This is, in essence, the message of Conflicted, a new book by Ian Leslie. Conflict can draw us together, make us smarter, and inspire us to be more creative. It can “force people to consider other perspectives, think more deeply about what they’re trying to accomplish, and fertilise new ideas.”…
What does a mentorship program for troubled boys in 1940s Boston, USA, have in common with a social dancing program for older adults in 2010s Sydney, Australia? Both were assumed to benefit participants, and both were subjected to randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which discovered—to the researchers’ surprise and even consternation—that the programs did not have…
The video of my keynote lecture, “Rethinking Social Action Through Music,” at the 5th international SIMM-posium (Social Impact of Making Music) on 12 January 2021 can be found below: https://www.bozar.be/en/magazine/171902-simm-posium-5
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Geoff Baker 