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…
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 from the US (Habibi et al. 2018) as well as the Inter-American Development Bank’s 2017 mega-evaluation of El Sistema in Venezuela (Alemán et al. 2017). Nevertheless, it is significant, in that Sistema programs tend to be very expensive in comparison to general music education, and so they would need to demonstrate considerable additional benefits if they were to be justifiable on extrinsic grounds. Also, Sistema’s initial expansion in the US (and elsewhere) in the late 2000s and early 2010s rested on claims of superiority to classroom music.
However, this study has passed almost entirely under the radar, as far as I can tell. I only discovered it thanks to an automatic alert from ResearchGate, which appeared because the article cited one of my own. None of the other Sistema-watchers that I know had seen it. I cannot find any evidence of others having written about it or cited it. This reflects a point that I made in my 2021 book Rethinking Social Action Through Music (244-45), about the bias towards positive findings and inflation of effects in the production of knowledge about music education in general (and specifically about Sistema):
“research studies themselves do not generally articulate grandiose statements about miracles and social transformation; rather, some point to small cognitive or psychological differences and benefits, while others do not. The two largest randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in this field found no effect of music training on cognitive or academic skills (Haywood et al. 2015; Alemán et al. 2017). But in the translation into the public realm, many caveats and limitations are ironed out, and null or negative findings are generally overlooked, since there are no organizations in whose interest it is to promote them. As Sala and Gobet (2020) note, the two major RCTs above have been paid little attention by the media or even by other researchers, even though RCT is the gold-standard methodology. More positive studies are more likely to be picked up by advocacy organizations and to lead to a report in the media, in which small-scale and specific findings often become an expansive and generalized story about the power of music (Mehr 2015; Odendaal et al. 2019). Many musicians encounter headlines, summaries, and animations of such stories on social media. As a result, there is a significant gap between the mixed findings and caution of some researchers concerning the transfer effects of music education, and the more uniformly optimistic opinion that prevails among musicians and the general public (Mehr 2014; D’Souza and Wiseheart 2018).
There is virtually no appetite for questioning the dominant narrative in the public sphere, meaning that counter-arguments are rarely heard. The classical music industry and profession have lined up behind a story that benefits and flatters them, and many classical music journalists have followed suit. Few are willing to risk arousing the wrath of music lovers by presenting less positive research conclusions to a wider public [for example, by writing an article for The Conversation]. The ambiguous picture presented in these pages will not be a surprise to many researchers in fields such as the sociology of music education or development studies, who are used to confronting counter-effects, unintended consequences, and gaps between aims and outcomes. In the public sphere, though, ambivalence about the power of music education is a rare bird.”
(I also address the issue of bias in this more recent blog post on the book The Power of Music.)
Had the recent study produced positive results, an international network of Sistema programs, advocates, and supporters would have amplified the story and incorporated it into their publicity. But who is going to spread the word about a null finding? Only positive outcomes impinge on the public consciousness and become part of the dominant narrative. As a result, public understanding is skewed.
As I argued in a recent article, Sistema is propelled by ideology, not science. The Venezuelan original took the form of classical youth orchestras because it was created by an orchestra conductor who loved classical music; all the claims about “social action through music” arose much later, without evidential grounding, as justification for devoting ever-increasing sums of public money to funding its founder’s private passion. El Sistema’s official mission and vision revolve around moral and spiritual claims, not scientific ones: “the ethical salvation of children and young people,” “the comprehensive development of human beings,” “transcendental values,” “rescuing children and young people from an empty, disorientated, and deviant youth,” and so on. The Sistema boom in the global North from 2007, spearheaded by the likes of Simon Rattle, was driven by perceptions or hopes that it represented a resurrection of classical music, and a variety of backers jumped on board in pursuit of a range of cultural, political, and economic objectives.
Part of its adaptation to its new contexts, though, was a requirement to play the game of evidence-based decision making. So the ideological motivations were soon covered by evaluations making all sorts of scientific(-sounding) arguments about the distinctive psychological and cognitive benefits conferred by Sistema, and skirting around the bigger questions that it raised. For a while, what Owen Logan called “Sistema-friendly research” provided a fig-leaf for the sector’s ideological drive. But the IDB’s 2017 evaluation of El Sistema was a big nail in the coffin for such justifications: after all, if the program’s own funder (in the biggest evaluation yet carried out, focused on the original version) could not find convincing evidence of cognitive or prosocial effects, then all such claims looked distinctly shaky. It was soon backed up by Habibi et al.’s study of a Sistema program in the US. Now, a few years later, comes this new research by Hogan et al.
Yet such studies have been largely ignored by the sector and its funders, revealing the performative nature of the whole evaluation enterprise. The game is indeed a game. One might be excused for thinking that evaluation provides the evidence for evidence-based decision making, but in reality the key decisions have already been taken (on ideological grounds) and evaluation is supposed to provide post hoc justification for them, hence anything that questions the status quo is ignored or spun. The IDB’s discovery that El Sistema didn’t work did not lead to defunding or radical changes, but rather to efforts to present the troublesome findings in a rosier light and to carrying on as before (see Baker, Bull, and Taylor 2018).
This is hardly unique to Sistema – as Ben Ramalingam (2013, 10) notes in his study of development:
“When the political context is not right, research is bypassed, evaluations are forgotten, [and] studies are ignored. […] Numerous policy evaluations and research studies […] end up wrecked, abandoned, or disappearing altogether.”
He quotes an anonymous donor: “We say we want evaluation, but we don’t, we want results, results we can put in our glossy reports, we can put on our websites that we can give to ministers to present in Parliament” (120).
(El) Sistema provides a good illustration of Ramalingam’s point. So where does that leave all this evaluation of Sistema programs?
On the one hand, I’m glad that the present study was done – it is interesting to see further evidence that the claims made by and for Sistema are exaggerated. Such evidence is potentially important at the level of program design and educational policy. On the other hand, it’s a bit of a waste of time if only a handful of researchers like me are going to pay any attention to it.
Just imagine if all the money and effort that has gone into 15 years of quantitative studies on (El) Sistema, into building a narrative on positive findings and excusing or ignoring null or negative ones, had instead been focused on exploring the latest qualitative research on pedagogy, curriculum, culture and development, etc. and on grappling with the question posed by Gert Biesta: what constitutes good education, and not just effective education?
Effects can potentially be produced by ethically and culturally questionable means. The Third Wave, an experiment carried out at a California high school in 1967 by a history teacher named Ron Jones, produced immediate improvements in discipline, motivation, and academic achievement – via an experiment in fascist-style education. José Antonio Abreu believed in the pursuit of musical excellence by any means necessary, and research going back more than 25 years has demonstrated that those means were often not pretty. In some hands, El Sistema was the very antithesis of a good education.
So much focus on effects can marginalize necessary debate about the crucial how of education. It is at the level of process that music educators, researchers, and funders should be focusing their efforts. If the process is right, if the education is good, the results will take care of themselves.
References
Alemán, X., Duryea, S., Guerra, N. G., McEwan, P. J., Muñoz, R., Stampini, M., & Williamson, A. A. (2017). “The effects of musical training on child development: A randomized trial of El Sistema in Venezuela.” Prevention Science, 18(7), 865–878. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0727-3
Baker, Geoffrey, Anna Bull, and Mark Taylor. (2018). “Who Watches the Watchmen? Evaluating Evaluations of El Sistema.” British Journal of Music Education 35 (3): 255–69. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265051718000086
D’Souza, Annalise A., and Melody Wiseheart. (2018). “Cognitive Effects of Music and Dance Training in Children.” Archives of Scientific Psychology 6 (1): 178– 92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/arc0000048
Habibi, A., Damasio, A., Ilari, B., Elliott Sachs, M., & Damasio, H. (2018). “Music training and child development: A review of recent findings from a longitudinal study.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1423(1), 73–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13606
Haywood, Sarah, Julia Griggs, Cheryl Lloyd, Stephen Morris, Zsolt Kiss, and Amy Skipp. (2015). “Creative Futures: Act, Sing, Play. Evaluation Report and Executive Summary.” NatCen Social Research. https://e-space.mmu. ac.uk/618917/1/Act__Sing__Play.pdf
Hogan, J., Cordes, S., Holochwost, S., Ryu, E., & Winner, E. (2023). “Participation in Intensive Orchestral Music Training Does Not Cause Gains in Executive Functioning, Self-Perception, or Attitudes Toward School in Young Children.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000593
Mehr, Samuel A. (2015). “Miscommunication of Science: Music Cognition Research in the Popular Press.” Frontiers in Psychology 6: 988. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2015.00988
Odendaal, Albi, Sari Levänen, and Heidi Westerlund. (2019). “Lost in Translation? Neuroscientific Research, Advocacy, and the Claimed Transfer Benefits of Musical Practice.” Music Education Research 21 (1): 4–19. https://doi.org/10. 1080/14613808.2018.1484438
Ramalingam, Ben. (2013). Aid on the Edge of Chaos. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sala, Giovanni, and Fernand Gobet. (2020). “Cognitive and Academic Benefits of Music Training with Children: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis.” Memory & Cognition 48 (8): 1429–41. https:// doi.org/10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2
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
This article offers a critical response to the special issue of Music & Arts in Action on youth orchestras and Sistema-inspired programs (Vol. 8 No. 2, 2023). I argue that the editorial’s framing of the field and its proposed research agenda are based on a mischaracterization of books by Tricia Tunstall and myself, and fail to take account of important developments over the last five years. The special issue advocates for exploring complexity, yet promotes narrowing research down to evaluative questions – a process of (over)simplification. Its pursuit of balance and symmetry has parallels with political centrism such as the Third Way. Like its political counterpart, academic centrism deserves recognition and critical scrutiny as an ideology. Given that the El Sistema field shows marked asymmetries, I argue that researchers should be more concerned with rebalancing, and should therefore be willing to “get off the fence.” Balance comes from a diversity of competing perspectives given equal space, not an insistence on adopting a single approved approach. I propose four ways to push the field to a new level: quality control, engagement with existing research, taking a stand against injustices, and working together.
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 Sistema, estaba tan fascinado por este programa orquestal como cualquiera de los que ahora quieren importar su esencia a Colombia. Como tal, puedo empatizar con ellos. Pero durante 15 años de investigación, mi visión de El Sistema ha cambiado radicalmente. Como alguien que desde entonces ha desarrollado una fuerte afinidad con la educación musical y los educadores musicales en Colombia, me siento obligado a compartir lo que he aprendido, con la esperanza de ayudar a evitar un error histórico.
Proponer la “orquesta-escuela” como elemento central de la nueva política musical colombiana es adoptar una jerarquía cultural que contradice directamente tanto la investigación contemporánea como el programa político y cultural más amplio del gobierno. Es muy irónico ver a un Gobierno de Cambio inspirado por una política musical ampliamente cuestionada, concebida hace casi 50 años y con claras raíces en el pensamiento colonial. Es muy extraño ver a un “gobierno de los nadies” proponer una política de “democratización al acceso de los valores de la cultura universal,” una idea que ha sido criticada desde los años 60 por su elitismo.
Es muy importante que una política de esta envergadura se apoye en investigaciones independientes y no sólo en publicidad institucional y propaganda política. El Sistema no se puede entender solo visitando su sede en Caracas, observando sus espectáculos orquestales o contando las masas de músicos de orquesta que ha producido. Estos simplemente reflejan los enormes recursos que se han invertido en él. Lo importante es el rendimiento de esos recursos a nivel social – y las investigaciones plantean muchas dudas.
En el siglo XXI ha surgido todo un campo internacional de investigación sobre la educación musical y el cambio social. Ha criticado el tipo de enfoque ejemplificado por El Sistema, señalando en su lugar modelos muy diferentes, centrados en los recursos culturales locales, la creatividad, la autoexpresión y los conjuntos más pequeños. En 2020 la Sociedad Internacional para la Educación Musical cerró el grupo de interés especial de El Sistema. ¿Por qué los diseñadores de la política musical colombiana no tienen en cuenta estas corrientes contemporáneas?
El objetivo oficial de El Sistema es “rescatar al niño y al joven de una juventud vacía, desorientada y desviada.” Este tipo de visión despectiva de la juventud, centrada en los déficits, fue desterrado hace mucho tiempo del ámbito del desarrollo social, que hoy en día prefiere ver a los jóvenes, en palabras de un libro reciente sobre Medellín, como “un fuego vital.” Consolida una relación jerárquica entre adultos y jóvenes y, al ver a estos últimos como deficientes, les quita poder, autonomía y voz. Esta malsana dinámica está detrás de muchos de los problemas documentados de El Sistema, incluyendo abuso sexual, maltrato a los músicos, inequidad de género, corrupción y abierta politización.
La educación musical que imparte tiene un enfoque anticuado, limitado y disciplinario. Los jóvenes músicos llamaban al fundador de El Sistema, José Antonio Abreu, “el Führer.” Un periodista de investigación lo etiquetó “el ogro filantrópico.” Una evaluación externa en 1997 identificó la dominación, la humillación y el bullying como características de la práctica pedagógica de El Sistema. Este estilo autoritario ha sido muy criticado en las últimas décadas por investigadores de educación musical en todo el mundo por ser excluyente e incluso traumatizante. El Sistema ha producido muchos buenos músicos, pero ¿quién ha contado los fracasos, las heridas y las decepciones?
Hasta la Fundación Hilti, que financia a El Sistema y a aliados cercanos como Iberacademy en Colombia, reconoció hace poco la necesidad de un cambio sistémico en este campo. Hilti creó la Academia para el Impacto a través de la Música con el objetivo de reformar la enseñanza. Su directora se mostró muy crítica con la pedagogía convencional por restringir la capacidad de acción de los estudiantes y la creación de comunidades. Así que los métodos de El Sistema son cuestionados incluso por uno de sus aliados más importantes. Intentar importar esta pedagogía a Colombia en 2023 sería un gran error, más aún teniendo en cuenta que los intentos anteriores de hacerlo han fracasado.
Dadas estas obvias debilidades, no es de extrañar que El Sistema no funcione como programa social. En 2017, el BID, que también financia el programa, publicó la mayor evaluación de El Sistema jamás realizada. Estimó que la tasa de pobreza entre los que se inscribieron en El Sistema era del 17%, mientras que la tasa de pobreza de los estados en los que vivían era del 47%. En otras palabras, el programa parecía excluir a los niños pobres en lugar de incluirlos. El estudio no encontró pruebas de que El Sistema potenciara las habilidades cognitivas o prosociales. Además, reveló una alta tasa de deserción.
Así pues, la idea de rescate no sólo es ideológicamente problemática, sino también una fantasía. Cuando se puso a prueba, los poderes mágicos de El Sistema no aparecieron por ninguna parte. La base de El Sistema es una idealización de la música, no un programa de eficacia demostrada.
Por lo tanto, los educadores musicales colombianos deberían estar preocupados al encontrar el mismo pensamiento subyacente en las nuevas propuestas del gobierno, que afirman que el paradigma orquesta-escuela permite “el rescate de la población juvenil e infantil de los sectores más deprimidos.” Su premisa central es que tocar o cantar en conjuntos grandes representa “un ejercicio de diálogo permanente que conduce a acuerdos. […] Este ejercicio permite el desarrollo de la concertación como principio fundante de la transformación social.” El problema es que el estudio del BID no encontró ningún cambio en las habilidades prosociales de los estudiantes de El Sistema. Además, ¿dónde está esa supuesta transformación social en Venezuela después de 48 años de inversiones masivas? No es de extrañar que no haya pruebas de los cambios sociales deseados: como señalan los destacados educadores musicales André de Quadros y Emilie Amrein, “el ensamble grande dirigido reproduce una cultura arraigada en el monólogo más que en el diálogo.” Una vez más, el modelo dominante se basa en la idealización, no en la realidad ni en la investigación.
Afortunadamente, Colombia viene avanzando en repensar los modelos pedagógicos para los ensambles grandes, a diferencia de El Sistema. La Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín es un buen ejemplo de este replanteamiento. Empezó en la década de 1990 estrechamente vinculada con El Sistema, pero después se alejó como resultado de una investigación interna a partir de 2005, que reveló una cantidad de problemas. La Red ha pasado 18 años intentando reformar el modelo. Colombia debería aprender de esta experiencia, no volver a mirar a Venezuela y retroceder el reloj a los años 90.
El viceministro Zorro trató recientemente de calmar las preocupaciones del sector musical, afirmando que el gobierno no está pensando implantar El Sistema en Colombia después de todo. Esto parece ser una buena noticia, dados los problemas y escándalos que han surgido en la organización venezolana. Sin embargo, es abierta y conocida la admiración tanto de Petro como de Zorro por El Sistema. ¿Por qué si no una delegación de alto nivel ha visitado hace poco la sede de El Sistema en Caracas? Esa admiración no ha desaparecido. A pesar de las afirmaciones recientes, es evidente que creen firmemente que El Sistema es un gran éxito y representa, si no un modelo a seguir, por lo menos una inspiración para Colombia.
El argumento de Zorro es que El Sistema se adaptará a las realidades colombianas. Sin embargo, esto no es suficiente para garantizar que los problemas desaparezcan. Asuntos similares a los encontrados en Venezuela han surgido en otros países donde El Sistema ha sido adoptado y adaptado, como México y Guatemala. Esto sugiere que el problema no está en su forma externa, sino más bien en su modelo educativo y en el pensamiento que lo sustenta.
El riesgo para Colombia hoy no es que el gobierno importe las formas institucionales de El Sistema. Es que olvide todo lo que se ha aprendido en Colombia, que construya un sistema colombiano sobre el pensamiento y la pedagogía del modelo venezolano y así que se repita la misma historia detrás de una fachada diferente. El problema fundamental no es de música sinfónica versus música popular o de colegios versus núcleos – es la visión de para qué sirve la música y cómo funciona.
Este momento histórico de cambio exige un nuevo enfoque. No el mero reciclaje de modelos establecidos, ya sean nacionales o extranjeros, sino un esfuerzo por tomar lo mejor de las prácticas existentes, desarrollarlas con la ayuda de las investigaciones más recientes y forjar una nueva visión de la música para el cambio social, digno de un Gobierno de Cambio.
¿Puede ahora relajarse el sector musical colombiano? Todavía no.
Geoffrey Baker es director de investigación de Agrigento, profesor emérito de Royal Holloway Universidad de Londres e investigador visitante de la Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Londres.
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: the response of the music sector.
In the case of Juilliard, 450 composers, musicians, educators, and arts leaders, led by the composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, immediately signed an open letter demanding action. As the WP article concluded:
Snider and the as-yet-unnamed coalition of composers are planning their first in-person strategic meeting in January to discuss further actions in directly addressing “intersectional” abuse and harassment across the composition community and classical music in general — where systemic inequities and imbalances have roots that run centuries deep.
“The positive thing to say about all of this,” Snider says, “is that it’s one of the very first times — maybe the first time in the history of our composition community — that men and women and people of all genders have come together to stand up and protect one another. It’s such a momentous occasion in our field, and I think it speaks volumes about the possibility for growth and change.”
When the El Sistema scandal broke last year, however, the response was minimal. This despite the fact that the Venezuelan affair was, in many ways, worse: it involved the sexual abuse of minors within what was promoted as a program to rescue and protect young people from social problems. A small handful of the hundreds of El Sistema-inspired programs around the world made a public statement condemning the abuse – suggesting that such a response was appropriate – but the vast majority remained silent. None of the classical music celebrities who had endorsed El Sistema opened their mouths. Gustavo Dudamel, the program’s figurehead, kept quiet. There was no joint statement or collective action from the classical music or music education sectors.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle for a month or so, as the story circulated around the world, journalists confirmed it independently, and El Sistema made a statement, including a vague promise to investigate itself (something that, unsurprisingly, generated little confidence among Venezuelan musicians); and then the issue went away, because no one in the sector had committed to keeping it on the table. 18 months later, programs and musicians around the world continue to align themselves proudly with El Sistema, as though nothing had ever happened. The scandal is never mentioned. The consequences for the organization and for individuals have been negligible.
Why such a contrast between the two responses to the same problem?
I suspect that the silence around El Sistema had much to do with the extent with which this organization, unlike Juilliard, had infiltrated the classical music and music education sectors. It had been widely lionized by musicians, educators, and journalists. Many had promoted El Sistema and even adopted it as part of their identity. Speaking out would have implied an admission that they had made a mistake. That they had backed the wrong horse. That they had failed to do due diligence. That they had promoted an abusive organization. They would have had to renounce part of themselves. This kind of mea culpa was apparently too much for most.
The composers decided to protect one another by taking a public stand. But the international El Sistema sector, with only rare exceptions, opted for protecting the brand – in other words, saying nothing. It could have used its influence to push for change in Venezuela to improve safeguarding for current and future students, but it did not.
Whatever the reason, the contrast is stark. While the composers have spoken out and are organizing further action, the field of social action through music stayed silent and, for the most part, pretended that nothing had happened. Many people who proclaimed publicly their commitment to music and social justice failed to act when serious injustice raised its head. This, too, “speaks volumes about the possibility for growth and change” – but not in a good way.
One can only hope that a few in the El Sistema sphere are observing the Juilliard scandal and noting the difference between a robust response and sweeping the issue under the rug. It’s never too late to take a stand on a problem that is “embedded deep into the culture of classical music education,” as Snider says, and will continue until musicians and program leaders speak up en masse rather than look the other way. And as Snider et al.’s letter illustrates, taking a stand does not just mean making general statements decrying sexual harassment and abuse – it also means naming specific institutions, demanding concrete action from them, and holding them publicly accountable. El Sistema will not change substantially as long as it is given a free pass by the rest of the world.
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 search showed the word “Sistema” appearing 95 times. But I quickly discovered numerous problems with its treatment.
The authors seem to have gone out of their way to present a positive image of El Sistema. They omit any reference to most of the critical literature on this subject. Only a single article is presented as raising questions about El Sistema. Neither of the two academic monographs on this topic are included. Studies with mixed conclusions are cited, but only their positive findings are mentioned. For example, two of Gabriela Wald’s articles appear, but her arguments about social division and reproduction are ignored, along with her evidence that students dissented from dominant narratives of social action through music. The authors give no inkling that Wald is a critic of Sistema-style programs in Argentina. Provenzano et al. (2020) is present, but only its positive results are cited; there is no mention of the fact that “program participants reported experiencing a decrease in satisfaction with life from preintervention to postintervention” or that the researchers identified this finding as “a major limitation of this study” (three other significant limitations are also listed). Furthermore, the same authors’ earlier article (Hopkins, Provenzano, and Spencer 2017), which is considerably more critical of El Sistema, is not included.
The most substantial quantitative study (Alemán et al. 2017) is repeatedly cited without any reference to the obvious question marks over its methods, to published, critical discussions of its findings (Baker, Bull, and Taylor 2018; Clift, Phillips, and Pritchard 2021), or to its damning conclusion that El Sistema did not reach more than a small number of poor children. The study’s authors acknowledged that El Sistema illustrated “the challenges of targeting interventions towards vulnerable groups of children in the context of a voluntary social program.” As Stephen Clift (2019) has noted in reference to this study: “As poorer children were under-represented, far from addressing social inequalities, the work of the [El Sistema] centres served to reinforce them – entirely contrary to the idea of an intervention designed to reduce social and health inequalities.” But Hallam and Himonides are silent on this major finding that undermines all the other claims about the Venezuelan program. Worse still, they assert that El Sistema fosters prosocial behaviour when Alemán et al. stated clearly that they “did not find any full-sample effects on cognitive skills… or on prosocial skills and connections.”
And the list goes on. The authors use older literature reviews by Creech et al. (2013; 2016) rather than more recent ones by Puromies & Jovonen (2020) and Bolden (2021) in which more critical literature is surveyed or more ambivalent conclusions are drawn. They include an article built on media reports, documentaries, advocacy literature, and institutional publicity materials – in other words, one that has no place in this kind of book – and another based on fieldwork by a student with no research training. The book’s position on the Sistema-inspired field rests heavily on program evaluations, without any discussion of their limitations as evidence or their potential skewing towards positive conclusions. This is a topic about which there has been plenty of academic debate: Jancovich and Stevenson (2021), for example, raise questions about the credibility of evaluations, arguing that many “reinforce overstated celebratory narratives,” and Baker, Bull, and Taylor (2018) illustrate this point specifically in relation to evaluations of El Sistema. The first factual sentence on El Sistema (p.326) contains two errors: the name of its founder is wrong, and the authors incorrectly claim that El Sistema was created as social action through music (a term that was actually adopted decades later, as I have noted in several academic publications).
In short, the book shows not just errors but also an overwhelming bias in its treatment of El Sistema. Bias is not a problem per se – some would argue that there is no such thing as unbiased research – but it is a problem when it is not acknowledged. It is a real problem in a book that presents itself as an objective review of the evidence, rather than a work with an explicit stance.
Positionality statements, acknowledging and explaining potential biases, have become commonplace in the social sciences, and are little short of a requirement in PhD theses these days, yet there is no sign of one here. On the contrary, the book makes implicit claims to neutrality. It states: “An inclusive research strategy was adopted in accessing the literature to be included in this book,” and its subtitle is “an exploration of the evidence” – yet some of the most substantial evidence has been excluded. Its preface ends: “It is hoped that […] the reader will be enabled to make an informed decision about the power of music in a range of areas across the lifespan.” How can the reader make an informed decision when the authors withhold some key sources of information and misrepresent others? The authors have a partial view, and they give the unsuspecting reader no choice but to adopt it. This sleight of hand – advocacy disguised as objectivity – is distinctly troubling in what will undoubtedly become a cornerstone text.
To be clear, we are not just talking about a little bit of gentle favouritism here. Ten years of heated debate in books, articles, special issues, book chapters, conferences, newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and social media are reduced to: “Not all of the research on Sistema-inspired projects has been positive.” Bibliographic leads for any reader intrigued to know more are almost entirely lacking. The authors’ claim about prosocial skills is squarely the opposite of the conclusion of the report that they cite – the academic equivalent of claiming that black is white. All academics make mistakes, but taken in the context of the treatment of El Sistema in the book as a whole, this is something else: Hallam and Himonides’ judgment appears to have been completely clouded by their advocacy stance.
I am reminded of Clift and colleagues’ recent critiques of large-scale surveys on the role of the arts in improving health and wellbeing, for losing sight of the crucial issue of the quality of the evidence in their focus on quantity. (In addition to the articles cited above, see here.) As we see above, there are several areas in which quality can be compromised in such surveys: in the studies that are cited (they may not be robust); in the way that they are cited (lack of critical scrutiny, selective reading, misrepresentation); and in the studies that are not cited (the omission of relevant but complicating evidence).
Another area is highlighted in a further article by Clift’s team: “vested interests” of academics performing the review. They ask: “Is the starting point of a review team one of ‘dispassionate enquiry and scepticism’ or is there a pre-established conviction […]? If the former, a review team may interrogate research methods and findings closely in the interests of establishing the truth or otherwise of claims made. If the latter, a review may be undertaken with the purpose of showcasing positive evidence.” This point is highly relevant in our case. Hallam and Himonides seem determined to sing the praises of El Sistema despite the many criticisms it has faced from other researchers, its obvious disjunctures with contemporary thinking on music, development, and social justice, and the string of public scandals (including repeated allegations of widespread sexual abuse) that undermine claims that it is a positive exemplar of “the power of music.” Why do the authors adopt this perplexing stance?
Rimmer (2020) provides important clues. It turns out that Hallam has advocated for the El Sistema model since 2010 and has been connected to the Sistema-inspired field in various capacities, including as a program evaluator and research supporter. Her husband was a driving force behind Sistema England and a member of its advisory board. Rimmer concludes that Hallam formed part of an “inner circle” and a “network of sympathetic voices” that served as key “sponsors” of Sistema in England. Hardly “dispassionate enquiry and scepticism,” then. Hallam’s vested interests in Sistema provide an obvious explanation for the bias in her review, including its ample, uncritical use of program evaluations. Rather than a neutral, inclusive exploration of the topic, as is claimed, the book is a prime example of what Owen Logan (2015) calls “Sistema-friendly research”: studies that “dovetail with the ‘spin’ coming from Sistema projects internationally, to the extent that researchers would appear to have a hand-in-glove relationship with the Sistema network.”
This slice of the book is highly anachronistic: rather than reflecting the lively academic debate on El Sistema that has emerged since 2014, it echoes the monochrome, ill-informed enthusiasm of a decade ago. It is a throwback to Hallam’s advocacy for Sistema England in the early 2010s – before independent research had begun to raise awkward questions, and long before a sexual abuse scandal in Venezuela led Sistema England to distance itself from the mother program (it closed down just months later). But ignoring the last eight years of vigorous and very public debate is no way for a literature review to proceed. Researchers of music education and social change should be perturbed that such a major work advocates for a program and a model that have been much questioned in recent years, and that it does so in such a problematic way. This book is a backwards step for El Sistema research and practice, and with its endorsement of the status quo, it may constrain much-needed reform and rethinking.
The fact that this problematic presentation of El Sistema comes from one of the most lauded figures in the music education field also raises uncomfortable questions about the reliability of academic discourse on the social impact of music. To be sure, I have examined just one sliver of the book, though with 95 mentions, it’s a significant one. But a question that emerges from Clift et al.’s work in this field is that if we take one element of a wide-ranging review and find it flawed, then how can we have confidence in the review as a whole or in its higher-level conclusions? If quality is compromised at a granular level, then the whole edifice is shaky, however impressive it may seem at first glance.
How many other hidden agendas are woven into the text, how much more of the evidence consists of sub-standard studies, and what else has been partially reported or omitted for not fitting with the story that Hallam and Himonides wish to tell? Answering that question in a comprehensive manner would be an unfeasibly large task, and maybe an impossible one, since a thorough knowledge of the literature on any given topic is required in order to spot potential bias. But the section on “Music and victims of abuse” deals only with music as a form of treatment or therapy; there is no mention of the well-known problem of sexual harassment and abuse within music education institutions. El Sistema makes an appearance in this section too, but (of course) only in a positive light; nothing is said about the abundant evidence of abuse of various kinds within the Venezuelan program, which has been reported in several academic publications and numerous international media outlets. The chapter on “Psychological wellbeing” has little to say about musicians’ wellbeing and the risks and emotional harms of musicianship for some, as eloquently discussed by Musgrave (2022). The section on “Social inclusion” makes no reference to critiques of this concept and its attachment to culture and education. In other words, there are signs that El Sistema is not a unique case in this book, and that critical questions and complicating evidence concerning negative aspects of music and music education may have been downplayed or elided in a more consistent fashion. If that is the case, then readers will have to look elsewhere in order “to make an informed decision about the power of music.”
“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, though, there is a film that puts them to the test: the remarkable Children of Las Brisas (2022), which, in its subtle exploration of the complexity and ambiguity of El Sistema in particular and the power of music more broadly, puts all its predecessors in the shade. This is not an El Sistema film, said its producer at the premiere in London; yet it gives far more insight into the program than the films that tackle the subject head on.
Despite the producer’s disclaimer, the first half of the film follows the established El Sistema documentary template fairly closely. Three talented young musicians are rising steadily up through the ranks of the program. They declare their love for music in moving terms. We meet their families, learn about their domestic dramas, see daily life in their low-income neighbourhood of Las Brisas, and peer inside the El Sistema music school in Valencia that has become a central point in their lives. We share their triumphs: Dissandra makes it into the National Children’s Orchestra and travels to Salzburg to play under Simon Rattle; Wuilly joins the Caracas Youth Orchestra, another prestigious ensemble. Abreu makes his usual oratorical appearance, sermonizing about the power of music, and the students’ experiences seem to bear out his vision. The film is too well made to fall into cliché, but its first part will feel familiar to anyone acquainted with media portrayals of El Sistema.
But then everything changes. The heroes’ journey is rudely interrupted: all three fail a crucial audition in Caracas. They are suddenly out in the cold; the dream of an El Sistema salary has vanished. Wuilly is forced to busk in the capital in order to survive; for a while he even has to live on the street. Dissandra plays background music in a restaurant, but this is not enough to make ends meet. She emigrates to Peru, where she too (barely) survives by busking. Edixon, under intense financial pressure like the others, decides to join the army – clearly a painful choice, given his dislike of the Venezuelan government. Having started down a familiar path, the film makers kept going when the story took a darker turn. They did not set out to critique El Sistema, but reality did that for them.
Children of Las Brisas is a moving story of individual and collective struggle, of connection and separation, and it will speak on an emotional level to a wide audience. Most obviously, it is a close-up portrait of the Venezuelan crisis. Yet it is a dense, rich film that operates on multiple planes and also opens up a number of intriguing questions for those with more specialized interests. It is about failure and decline – of a country, and of its most famous cultural symbol. We witness Venezuela, and El Sistema, falling apart. The film interrogates idealistic narratives of music education through the lens of one of its most famous examples. This is not a romanticized story of triumph against adversity, nor of the power of music to change the world. El Sistema does not arrest the country’s decline; indeed, through its incorporation as a propaganda tool it becomes part of the problem. It is unable to provide a lifeline even for the three protagonists, let alone for the country as a whole.
If the film starts with Abreu’s idealistic words about music’s spiritual richness overcoming material poverty, it ends with a dose of cold reality: its protagonists – all of three of whom are talented and have dutifully followed Abreu’s prescription of “work and study” – are struggling to survive economically. Dissandra even wonders out loud whether all those years of single-minded dedication to classical music, of “playing and fighting,” were really worth it. (Tocar y luchar – to play and to fight – is El Sistema’s slogan.) This is unheard of in El Sistema documentaries: doubts over the validity of the program’s mantras. With the protagonists’ classical music dreams in tatters, the film closes with Abreu’s idealistic rhetoric looking equally threadbare.
A crucial element of this story is one that is usually downplayed or ignored in media and advocacy accounts: money. The three students had to break into (or remain in) one of El Sistema’s three “professional” youth orchestras in order to keep going. Failure meant being forced to do something else for a living. The extraordinary thing about El Sistema in its heyday was that it offered a decent salary to a small percentage of its students (the most talented, not the most needy, as access to the salary was via audition), and this salary (or the aspiration to attain it) played an important part in keeping the students motivated and the institutional wheels in motion. In the early days of El Sistema, Abreu lured music students away from other projects and music schools by offering them scholarships. In private, students would joke that El Sistema’s slogan should really be tocar y cobrar – to play and get paid. In other words, the real story of El Sistema was less about the salvational power of art, and more about the program’s unprecedented resources and how they were distributed – a story as much about the power of money as about the power of music.
This angle to the film comes out in fleeting but crucial scenes. To be sure, the students speak lovingly about music itself. But at one point, Edixon shows his mother his viola: “This thing has value. It’s going to bring in real money.” Dissandra’s mother tells her: “Music is your passport to success.” Forget spiritual richness: for these young people and their families, music was an economic or career strategy. Forget changing the world: this was about the promise of social mobility for a few talented individuals. But El Sistema held all the cards. Through his brilliant if dubious financial management, Abreu had created a classical music bubble economy in Venezuela, built on oil revenue (where else in the world were teenage orchestral musicians paid adult salaries?). But his steady monopolization of the Venezuelan music scene had left most of the power with El Sistema and little with its students, breeding a culture of dependency. In the film, all it takes is one failed audition for things to fall apart. Music or the viola couldn’t provide for these students in Venezuela; only El Sistema’s patronage could. Many films have portrayed the inside of the bubble, without recognizing its real nature; Children of Las Brisas shows us life on the outside and then, in quick succession, what happened when the bubble burst.
The words of Dissandra’s mother – “music is your passport to success” – come back to haunt the film, not just because success turns out to be elusive, but also because her daughter’s chances eventually hinge on a passport – a real identity document, not an imagined artistic one. It turns out that for Dissandra, music, without the legal ID, is a passport to nothing. In this film, the ideal is repeatedly overwhelmed by the real.
Much of the film’s interest comes from its implicit questioning of the kinds of heart-warming slogans and aphorisms that underpin El Sistema and the international field it has spawned. One of its most powerful moments issues just such a challenge, though in a way so subtle that it will probably be missed by viewers not well versed in this field. After his musical dreams are nixed by El Sistema’s uncompromising filtering for talent, and with economic necessity pressing down on his family, Edixon joins the army. Or, as the film tells us, he exchanges his viola for a rifle. This is striking enough on its own, but the resonance is all the greater for those who spot its inversion of another El Sistema motto that is famous not just in Venezuela but across Latin America: a child who takes up a musical instrument will never take up a weapon. Perhaps the film’s makers should have made this point explicitly for the uninitiated; but once again, they show that reality is much more complex than Abreu’s famous mottos.
Poignantly, Edixon reasserts his enduring love for his viola near the end of the film, long after he has been cast aside by El Sistema, and as he struggles to make a living outside of music. I recalled something that an El Sistema student told me back in 2010. The program cares little about individuals, he said; they are easily replaceable: “You may love El Sistema, but it doesn’t love you.” On one level, Children of Las Brisas is a story of unrequited love for El Sistema and for music.
At a more everyday level, the film captures well the detail and atmosphere of El Sistema. There is plenty of the camaraderie among students, the space of sociability that the music school provides, the formation of a new “family” there. But there are also glimpses of the authoritarian, male-dominated organization (there are lots of maestros); of the arbitrary, disempowering, intimidating institutional culture (when crucial auditions in Caracas will happen is anyone’s guess, and Wuilly is called to one – in front of twenty teachers – at a single day’s notice); and the survival-of-the-fittest ethos that lies behind the discursive smokescreen of “social inclusion” (students constantly competing against each other in auditions, and little interest paid to the “failures”).
Dissandra and Wuilly both make it into the top echelons of the program, only to be cast out again. And once their star starts to fade, so does their adopted “family.” Despite all the talk about the collective, in El Sistema the students rise on their own and fall on their own. When the going is good, they move to Caracas from their home town, leaving their real and adopted families behind. The highly centralized El Sistema is a case study of music disrupting existing social bonds as it creates new ones. The scenes of camaraderie involving Wuilly will have an edge to them for any viewer familiar with his public falling-out with El Sistema and his fellow musicians shortly afterwards (I also remember well how his former colleagues attacked him mercilessly on social media). In the end, all three protagonists had to go it alone.
The film is not beyond criticism. It is a little too reverent in its treatment of Abreu, following the erroneous tendency to pin the blame for El Sistema’s decline squarely on its appropriation by Chávez, and overlooking Abreu’s complicity. It was Abreu who crafted El Sistema’s “musical populism” to appeal to the ears of Venezuela’s populist presidents. It was Abreu who made overtures to Chávez, not the other way round. In 2014, El Nacional journalist Diego Arroyo Gil described El Sistema’s founder as a serial flatterer of political leaders who often appeared at their side, “smiling, like Caesar’s special guest.” Abreu was no one’s victim. Political collaboration was his modus operandi, and El Sistema’s reduction to an outright tool of political propaganda was a consequence of his Faustian pact.
In its eagerness to criticize the Venezuelan government, the film underplays not only Abreu’s flaws but also those of his program. After all, it was El Sistema’s Darwinism that provided the turning point in the protagonists’ musical lives. The program’s problematic features (such as authoritarianism, arbitrariness, opacity, gender bias, and sexual harassment) are legion and increasingly well documented. What’s more, they have been in El Sistema’s DNA since the start, to judge from interviews that I carried out with older musicians in Venezuela; some were noted by external evaluators in the late 1990s, before Chávez came to power; so they cannot be laid at the door of the Bolivarian Revolution. The notion of El Sistema as an exemplary program until Chávez came along and ruined it is a popular one in Venezuela, but it is a fantasy, built on a relentless PR operation and the silencing of critical voices.
(Interestingly, the film’s website is rather more directly critical of El Sistema than the film itself: “the impoverished families were sold a social narrative with no conclusion. Education was prioritised over subsequent employment or even basic needs, flooding a society with thousands of violinists at a time when it was struggling to feed its children.” Perhaps such critiques ended up on the cutting-room floor.)
Nevertheless, these are minor quibbles about an otherwise exceptional documentary. Much more important are the larger questions that it poses. It is reminiscent of the classic documentary Hoop Dreams – another film that is about much more than its ostensible subject (in this case, basketball). It focuses on the shadow of failure hovering even over the talented in highly competitive worlds like sport and classical music. These kinds of stories are very rarely told; most writers and film-makers just pluck out a few exceptional cases and create musical inspiration porn. Yet these stories may reflect the experiences of the majority. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan children have grown up dreaming of being Dudamel, but how many Dudamels are there today? And how many Dissandras, Edixons, and Wuillys, busking on foreign street corners or forced to abandon their musical ambitions altogether? If Hoop Dreams exposed the faultlines and the elusiveness of the American Dream, Children of Las Brisas does the same – beautifully, if painfully – for El Sistema’s Venezuelan Dream.
For screenings in London on Monday 22nd and Wednesday 24th August, visit: https://dochouse.org/cinema/screenings/children-las-brisas-qa
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 Music Education Council (MEC), entitled “The Importance of National Youth Music Organisations and Centres of Advanced Training.” It featured representatives of some of the UK’s most hallowed youth music ensembles, including the National Youth Orchestra, the National Children’s Orchestra, and the National Youth Choirs. If music education has traditionally been constructed as a pyramid, this was the apex on show.
It was fascinating to see how the language and aims of the elite end of the music education sector have shifted towards those of socially-oriented programs in recent years. The centre of gravity of the youth ensemble world is moving towards SATM’s stated goals. This might justifiably be seen as a vote of confidence in SATM. But it also poses a subtle challenge for a sector that historically defined itself against the norm.
If ideas such as inclusion, community, and youth voice become mainstream in the large-ensemble world, even among high-performance groups, then what will be distinctive about SATM? What will be its USP (unique selling point)?
The logical conclusion is that SATM will need to up its game if it’s going to offer something distinctive. It will need to embrace pedagogical innovation and strive harder to centre and achieve its social goals. It will need to move forwards if it is not to look like it is moving backwards relative to the mainstream youth music sector. The MEC seminar could be seen as a pat on the back for SATM, but also as a spur to action.
In fact, the issue is not just that the mainstream may be catching up with SATM; it may actually be overtaking it in some places. The MEC seminar revealed the UK’s traditional elite to be more progressive than some of the most celebrated SATM programs in certain ways (for example, in the routine involvement of young people in governance). This is a warning against complacency and outdated alignments, which have held back some parts of the SATM field.
An important takeaway from the MEC event was that if programs are to be socially progressive, they also have to be musically progressive. Fully embracing youth voice means giving young people full control over the music – empowering them to make the music that they want to make, the music that is relevant to their lives. The social goal (youth agency) needs to be embedded in the musical process. A program that is distinctive is likely to sound distinctive.
This presents a particular challenge for SATM, given that the field’s most famous exemplars have been musically conservative. How to break away from the reproductive model of the past and embrace musical creativity in all its guises? How to put young people – not the conductor, the composer, or the musical work – at the centre of the musical process? SATM’s best-known programs do not provide much of a lead. It was noticeable at the MEC event that the programs that are most youth-driven at a musical level are the least conventional ones (such as Urban Development and the National Youth Folk Ensemble), which are not focused on large ensembles or classical music. This poses questions for SATM, which has historically centred these tools and been rooted in the classical orchestral world. What justification is there for continuing down this path when there is so much evidence of the advantages of other ones?
Even the traditional elite are now calling classical music “the elephant in the room.” They are pointing to genre fluidity as the future. They are dismissing instructionism (a pedagogy of adults instructing children in technical skills, which is the bedrock of SATM’s first-generation programs) as an old-fashioned approach. The National Youth Orchestra says that it is no longer an orchestral training program, while the National Children’s Orchestra is reconsidering the meaning of excellence. This is a sector on the move, its rethinking of its practices and purpose turbocharged by the Covid pandemic. SATM cannot afford to sit on its laurels.
The MEC seminar showed the apex of the UK’s music education pyramid looking critically at itself in public. Representatives acknowledged that dance education has been more progressive than music, despite having less funding; that music organizations should learn from their youth work equivalents, which have been doing deeper work for longer; that a potential gulf exists between musical skill and capacity to work with young people. Such public realism is salutary (and it has not historically been the norm in SATM).
If even the National Youth Music Organisations and Centres of Advanced Training are raising such critical questions, the writing is clearly on the wall for some of the foundational tenets of SATM. The good news is that new ones are already being written in certain places; some programs are forging less conventional paths, as described in my most recent book. But the field could go further: there is still plenty of attachment to old and increasingly questioned ideas. The MEC seminar saw leading youth music organizations come together and not only commit to new ways of thinking but also distance themselves from old ones and acknowledge their historical shortcomings. This is something that SATM as a sector is still reluctant to do, but with National Youth Music Organizations on the move, the pressure is on.
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 new centres were the major element (more than 50%) of a $211 million package for El Sistema: $150 million provided by the IDB and $61 million by the Venezuelan state. One, in the city of Barquisimeto, was designed by Frank Gehry and was to be named Dudamel Hall, a reflection of the famous conductor’s warm relations with Venezuela’s political leadership.
The buildings were due to be completed by 2011. However, in my 2014 book on El Sistema, I drew attention to the fact that these centres had not been built, or even started, by that year. In a 2016 blog post, I noted that while the regional centres remained unrealized, El Sistema was pouring resources into a huge new building in Caracas, which was not in the original IDB plans – indeed, which flatly contradicted the bank’s stated goal of decentralization. As well as questioning the logic behind this move, I wrote that “there’s a real risk of this building becoming a white elephant.” Yet despite the global profile of El Sistema and the large sums of public money involved, no one else engaged with the story. I devoted a 2017 blog post to this topic under the heading, “Is anyone paying attention to the big issues?”, and asked:
Is there any mention or explanation or discussion of this 180-degree turn anywhere? […] El Sistema is a major classical music story that tens of thousands of people around the world follow avidly, yet no one seems to notice or care about the big issues. Far more attention is paid to trivial details like paper violins than to an illogical volte-face with a price tag of over $100 million.
Today, a team of Venezuelan investigative journalists published a detailed report on the phantom centres. They confirmed that, fifteen years after the contract was signed, not a single brick of the original seven centres has been laid. The half-built Caracas centre has been on hold since 2020 due to a lack of resources. The report highlights the illogicality of reducing a national program of decentralization to the construction of a single building in the capital. In the regional cities identified by the IDB, instead of the modern music complexes that had been planned, the reporters found borrowed or rented facilities in a poor state of repair, with some having closed altogether. A number of music schools in Venezuela’s second city, Maracaibo, were listed as operational on El Sistema’s website but were found to be shut or even non-existent – the kind of discrepancy between publicity and reality that I have been highlighting for a decade. Similarly, El Sistema’s CEO, Eduardo Méndez, claimed that demand was surging and he outlined plans for expansion; however, music school staff interviewed by the reporters spoke of declining numbers of teachers and students.
This decline is hardly surprising, given that many staff receive only “symbolic salaries.” Of the huge sums allocated at the top of the program, only a few drops reach the bottom. The reporters interviewed a former El Sistema teacher who left after receiving no payment for a year, calling the program “a swindle,” and a current teacher who described what is almost a kind of indentured labour. He is paid a miserable $6 a month, yet he said:
I can’t leave. If I quit, they’ll take away my instrument.
Without an instrument, he would be unable to moonlight at the weekend, playing the gigs that allow him to maintain himself.
How much money has been paid out by whom and what it has been spent on remains something of a mystery; the report details wildly contradictory figures in official financial accounts, and the IDB and the Venezuelan government refused to clarify the situation to the journalists. This is the sobering, messy, murky reality of El Sistema – one that has long been obvious to serious observers but ignored by so many, at home and abroad, who only want to see a “Venezuelan musical miracle.”
That it has taken so many years for this story to be investigated and aired in the media simply illustrates the iron grip that El Sistema has maintained on the public narrative throughout its history. The program’s founder and long-time director, José Antonio Abreu, infamously used bribes and threats to keep the Venezuelan media on a tight leash and El Sistema’s scandals out of the news. To my knowledge, the last critical investigative report on El Sistema dates from 1994: Rafael Rivera’s “The Philanthropic Ogre.” (Today’s investigation is not the first to focus on financial murkiness: Abreu’s slush fund and “strange, improvised” movement of money was a focus of a 1990 article by Roger Santodomingo.) Now, nearly 30 years later, Venezuelan investigative journalists have once again pierced the heavy veil of silence that covers El Sistema and keeps its realities away from the ears of the world.
In 2014, I wrote that El Sistema had numerous skeletons in its closet and that more evidence would eventually come to light. This year it is failures of planning and infrastructure; last year it was sexual abuse. 2018 saw unpublished and unflattering evaluations of El Sistema emerge, including highly critical reflections by current and former members of the program; while in 2017 Abreu’s phantom PhD was rumbled and the IDB published evidence of a low percentage of poor beneficiaries and minimal social impact (undermining El Sistema’s two major claims to fame). The year before that, former El Sistema violinist Luigi Mazzocchi painted a detailed portrait of institutional malpractice to Larry Scripp for an article in VAN Magazine. That’s quite a few skeletons for what was once hailed as one of classical music’s biggest success stories, and yet the closet is far from empty.
UPDATE: 16 March
On the eve of the publication of this investigation, the IDB clarified to the reporters that responsibility for the failure to build the music centres lay squarely with El Sistema. The investigative team also noted that the decision to focus resources on a second HQ in Caracas, rather than the regional centres specified in the grant agreement, was described by Eduardo Méndez as “a strategic decision by Maestro Abreu.”
As explained in my 2017 blog post, the IDB identified decentralization via the construction of regional centres as a priority in 1997. Indeed, it argued that constructing a headquarters in Caracas “would be appropriate only if it were accompanied by the Regional Centres.” El Sistema failed to act on this directive in Phase I of the IDB project, building only the first Caracas HQ. So when the IDB issued its second and much larger Phase II loan in 2007, it reiterated that the central goal was “to deconcentrate El Sistema” via the creation of “an intermediate regional level.” But history simply repeated itself: again, the regional centres were forgotten; again, El Sistema only built a complex in Caracas (this time unfinished).
From the point of view of infrastructural development, the last 25 years of El Sistema – and the IDB’s relationship with the program – have been a resounding failure. The desolate picture in regional cities today contrasts starkly with the elaborate plans that were made (and financed) all those years ago. And as Méndez revealed, the buck stops with José Antonio Abreu, who was responsible for the abandonment of El Sistema’s top strategic priority over the last quarter of a century.
Geoff Baker 