Approaching Venezuela, its people, and their mesmerising music.

In 1975, musician (and economist) José Antonio Abreu developed a state-funded program to bring free classical music education, and instruments, to children across his country. He called it “the System”, “el sistema”. Across 45 years, over 900000 young people have benefited from a program that has revolutionised the access to music education across the country, and that has been admired, studied and adapted, across the globe. 

Nonetheless, great ideas need great support, and it rarely comes for free. Questions on power, control, identity, nationalism have challenged a top-down program that managed to survived 7 different governments accommodating to the prevailing political discourse of their time. Is “el sistema” an antidote to poverty or a tool to consolidate power? Can culture and access to education be truly independent if they depend on state support?

"El sistema" is, no doubt, a story of success, with more lights than shadows, from a fascinating country that illustrates success and failure as no other. The richest in resources, and the poorest in their distribution, a country in which petrol is cheaper than water, with a broken society united only in their pride for their homeland. A country of talent, of nature, of beauty, but, above all, of music. The country of Simón Díaz, Gustavo Dudamel, Serenata Guayanesa or Juan Vicente Torrealba. Venezuela.