Music has the power to change lives in the most amazing ways. Unfortunately, it’s often considered a pastime or expensive hobby that is most enjoyed by the affluent among us, but this view is uninformed and downright wrong. Tom Barnes shared nine amazing stories from around the world proving that the power of music is actually most felt among those living in poverty.
Paraguay – making instruments from recycled material
In a small town in Paraguay set atop a landfill, Favio Chavez started a music school in the area so kids could be occupied while their parents worked. He also built instruments out of recycled materials to create the Cateura Orchestra.
The orchestra has had a tremendous impact on the community, and it now plays at world-class venues around the world. Via Mic
Congo – Self-taught musicians travel miles to play in an orchestra
Despite being one of the world’s poorest countries, Congo is also home to a passionate group of self-taught musicians that have created a haven in the midst of the country’s poverty and frequent wars.
The Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra.
Many of the musicians have to make tremendous sacrifices to attend rehearsal, many traveling miles and bringing their children with them. Most of its members are self-taught, including the orchestra’s founder, Armand Diangienda. Via Mic
Mexico – A young orchestra uses trash to build instruments
Fernando Lopez started a band at the age of 18 and having no alternatives, learned to make instruments from junk. The band has since made significant achievements since but is yet to start purchasing its instruments.
The Orquesta Basura was founded as a game, but also as a shout of desperation,” Fernando Lopez, the band leader of Mexico City’s Orquesta Basura, told Fusion. “I was 18 years old when I started to make instruments. We didn’t have the money to buy instruments, but that wasn’t going to limit us.” Via Mic
Argentina – Children taught to build their own instruments
Luis Miraldi founded the Hacelo Sonar workshop initiative to teach children as well as adults how to craft musical instruments from recycled materials, giving them the artistic outlet they would otherwise lack.
“For us, it is also an enormous reward to leave, for example, a slum and see as we walk around that the kids are still making sounds with the guitars they made,” Miraldi told Global Press Journal. “With that, it is enough — we already have our pay.” Via Mic
Venezuela – Needy children get a chance at a musical life
Jose Antonio Abreu started the El Sistema music education outreach program that gives the country’s neediest children access to high-quality musical education.
The program’s supporters claim its musical training helps children develop “soft skills” such as “focus or memory or inhibition, even attention,” Stanford Thompson, chairman of El Sistema USA, told Mic. Via Mic
Global – Musicians Without Borders foster unity among divided people
Musicians Without Borders is using music to create bonds between people that have been divided along ethnic or political lines through their shared musical interest.
Music Bus Goes Palestine
Their mantra — “war divides, music connects” — has been true everywhere from Eastern Europe to Palestine. Via Mic
West Philadelphia – Music helping kids get to college
Play On, Philly is a program that provides music education on a daily basis to needy students, giving them the chance to develop their focus, memory, and executive functions.
The program ran a study with St. Francis de Sales School in 2012-2013, randomly assigning some students to participate in Play On, Philly and assigning another group to an after-school tutoring program. They found that “students enrolled in Play On, Philly exhibited better performance on tasks of executive functions, higher levels of academic achievement and higher rates of school attendance (prosocial behavior) than students not involved in the program.” Via Mic
Los Angeles – Using music to close the achievement gap
Providing music education to students from LA’s poorest areas, the Harmony project is helping to close the achievement gap between students from different socio-economic backgrounds.
Proof of these incredible gains can be found in the Harmony Project’s numbers. Since 2008, 90% of the Harmony Project’s children have gone on to college — an amazing statistic considering that the high-school dropout rates in the Los Angeles area can reach 50%. Via Mic
New Orleans – Bring music back after Katrina
As a result of Hurricane Katrina, many school districts in New Orleans lost their stores of musical instruments. The Tipitina Foundation is doing an incredible work in helping to get the city’s music back.
The foundation is the charitable arm of the club Tipitina’s “the most famous musical haunt in a city famous for its music,” according to the New York Times. Since 2003, Tipitina’s has provided musical instruments to schools through the program Instruments A Comin’. They raise money through benefit concerts and donations and purchasing them at a “deeply discounted rate” from local shops. Via Mic
Music is changing the lives of young people in poverty #MUSICSPEAKS
Music changes lives. Fact. So we’ve started a global movement called ‘Music Speaks’. We’re hooked up with some of the world’s hottest artists to say ‘Bollocks to Poverty’ and showcase young music talent in some of the world’s poorest countries. We stand up for the rights of young people in extreme poverty from Kenya to Brazil, Palestine and Liberia.
By bringing beats, rhymes and good vibes to the world’s poorest slums, we’re changing lives through music and helping young people to win the fight against drugs, crime and prostitution.
WESTCHESTER, Pennsylvania — For decades, music has played a visible and controversial role in efforts for reducing poverty. Thirty years ago, singer-songwriters Bob Geldof and Midge Ure founded Band Aid to raise money for anti-poverty efforts in then famine-struck Ethiopia.
Band Aid succeeded in raising money and awareness with its single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The release of the single was followed by the similarly successful Live Aid—a dual-venue concert also set up by Geldof and Ure. Via Borgen Magazine
11 Beautiful Oliver Sacks Quotes That Capture the Power of Music
Last Thursday, in a New York Times op-ed, neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks revealed that he has been battling cancer in various forms for the past nine years and that it has now metastasized in his liver. “This form of cancer cannot be halted,” he writes. But rather than resigning to his disease and letting it slowly drain his will, he has resolved to face it.
“I feel intensely alive,” he writes in the New York Times, “and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.” Via Mic
Proof of these incredible gains can be found in the Harmony Project’s numbers. Since 2008, 90% of the Harmony Project’s children have gone on to college — an amazing statistic considering that the high-school dropout rates in the Los Angeles area can reach 50%. Via Mic
Music changes lives. Fact. So we’ve started a global movement called ‘Music Speaks’. We’re hooked up with some of the world’s hottest artists to say ‘Bollocks to Poverty’ and showcase young music talent in some of the world’s poorest countries. We stand up for the rights of young people in extreme poverty from Kenya to Brazil, Palestine and Liberia.
WESTCHESTER, Pennsylvania — For decades, music has played a visible and controversial role in efforts for reducing poverty. Thirty years ago, singer-songwriters Bob Geldof and Midge Ure founded Band Aid to raise money for anti-poverty efforts in then famine-struck Ethiopia.
Last Thursday, in a New York Times op-ed, neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks revealed that he has been battling cancer in various forms for the past nine years and that it has now metastasized in his liver. “This form of cancer cannot be halted,” he writes. But rather than resigning to his disease and letting it slowly drain his will, he has resolved to face it.
