Bach in the slums

Playing a musical instrument in an orchestra, says Dr Jose Antonio Abreu, "is one of the best forms of socialisation that there is."

A former minister of culture and initiator of Venezuela's amazing musical education programme Abreu has transformed the country into probably the world's leading musical centre.

It began in 1974 in a rehearsal space in an underground car park with a handful of kids.

Now, it is estimated, a quarter of a million young Venezuelans are either playing a musical instrument or singing in a choir.

There are literally hundreds of orchestras and choirs throughout the country.

Called El Sistema by its members, the programme is celebrating 30 years of making classical musicians out of so many young Venezuelans. It has transformed the lives of many underprivileged and at-risk youths in the process.

When 11 young musicians put on the youth orchestra's first concert in 1975, there were only two symphony orchestras in the entire country. The programme has helped boost that number to around 200, with at least one professional orchestra in every state.

El Sistema has also transcended politics and government changes, receiving increased funding from every new government. Its 2005 budget was $23 million.

Abreu managed to get a law passed by parliament, guaranteeing every child the right to a musical education.

Teachers go into schools in the countryside, the slums and the towns and let the children play with instruments.

If they show an interest, they are allowed to borrow the instrument of their choice, but have to agree to practise and to perform on it within a few weeks.

If they keep up their interest and practise seriously for two years, they are allowed to keep their instrument.

Abreu explains how he sees musical education and working with a group of other musicians as a vital part of growing up.

"Here, you learn to co-operate with others," he says. "You are an individual performer, but you are involved in teamwork with others, you learn to give and take, to show solidarity and sympathy.

"You pass on your skills and knowledge to others selflessly and learn in the same way from them.

"You are also creating beauty, giving pleasure to many more.

"Historically, classical music was performed by an elite for an elite, then by an elite for the majority, but, in Venezuela, it is now being performed by a majority for a majority."

The young musicians' excitement stems from the programme's social mission, which Abreu describes as helping "the fight of a poor and abandoned child against everything that opposes his full realisation as a human being."

El Sistema has brought the sounds of Beethoven to the masses by giving children instruments, scholarships and free transportation in barrios such as the Caracas neighbourhood of Sarria.

About 90 per cent of students there are from the country's lowest economic class.

"In Venezuela, we broke the myth that you have to be from the upper class to play violin," says the Sarria school's director Carlos Sedan.

Young musicians in Sarria are not allowed to take their instruments home because of the risk of being mugged and some come to class with headaches because their families cannot afford food.

Yet, when they perform, they become the pride of their neighbourhoods and inspire their parents to learn about the great classical composers.

The country has been visited by some of the world's leading musicians, from Sir Simon Rattle to Placido Domingo and Claudio Abbado.

Rattle said that, if he were asked where the future of classical music lay, he would unhesitatingly say: "Here in Venezuela."

Domingo cried when he saw the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra perform. He confessed that the concert evoked the strongest emotions that he had ever felt.

A recent film Tocar y Luchar - Play and Struggle - is a tribute to this musical movement in Venezuela and includes interviews with Abreu and Rattle, among others.

But what draws the most admiration is watching the youngsters themselves playing and talking about their joy in music.

Seeing a 12-year-old black girl wandering past the multicoloured, peeling walls of a narrow alleyway in a slum neighbourhood playing Bach exquisitely on her violin, one can't help but be moved.

A nine-year-old in a cramped flat of a town suburb explains how he needs to sleep next to his cello - it is his teddy bear, his source of comfort and pleasure.

"I can't get to sleep if it's not near me," he says. "It means that I can get out of bed and practise at any time."

These children are also all amazingly articulate about their playing and the pleasure and pride that they get from it.

When I think of many British kids who are interested only in football or computers and their fascination with celebrity fame or individual wealth, it is uplifting to see how Venezuelan youngsters are transformed into all-round social beings by their very different experience.

The talented musicians of the National System of Venezuelan Youth and Children's Orchestras are a source of national pride and are treated like football stars in other Latin American countries.

They have now also inspired 23 other countries across the hemisphere to launch similar music education programmes.

To watch one of the youth orchestras playing is a visual experience in itself. There is no evening dress seriousness or awesome reverence.

Their faces reveal their rich ethnic and gender mix. They dress in brightly coloured shirts in the colours of the Venezuelan flag and, in strongly rhythmic pieces, they sway with their bodies like dancers and jubilantly throw their instruments in the air at the end, reminiscent of Grand Prix winners tossing champagne bottles about.

Children as young as two or three are given the chance of playing on an instrument. The programme has also been taken into juvenile penitentiaries and schools for the disabled - there are choirs made up of deaf and blind children, the deaf ones being encouraged to gesticulate with their hands to accompany the music.

All participants, teachers and students, say that the bond of affection that is built up is life-changing.

One of Abreu's musicians is 23-year-old Lennar Acosta, who, six years ago, was already making his ninth visit to a Caracas correctional facility after a history of heavy drug use and armed robbery.

While the facility denied Acosta's request to return to school, the youth orchestra took him on as a student.

He now earns his living at a music institute, has played a dozen times in the nation's famed Teresa Carreno music hall and is studying to perform Mozart's clarinet concerto.

"One of the biggest emotions I've felt was when they gave me a clarinet," Acosta says.

"El Sistema ended up straightening me out. It is my family, like my home."

The state oil company Pedevesa is one of the big sponsors of this programme, because it doesn't come cheap and instruments can be very expensive, but no child is deprived of the chance.

Rattle said that the phenomenon is like "a resurrection." It doesn't just enrich lives, it also saves them. It promotes social and psychological health.

Claudia Carnevali of the Venezuelan Cultural Section in London thinks one of the reasons for the enormous success of this programme lies in the rich ethnic and cultural mix of the population.

Venezuela has one of the most diverse populations of all Latin America - black, Hispanic and other European, indigenous and Asiatic.

Although the movement began before the present revolution, the administration of President Hugo Chavez is actively continuing and promoting this programme, which it hopes to widen out to all of Latin America and beyond.

This should be a cause for shame for so-called rich countries in Europe or north America, where music has been taken off the curriculum of many schools because of lack of funding for instruments or of teaching time.

• The Venezuelan Youth Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle will be in Britain for the Proms in August - a concert not to be missed if you can get tickets.

JOHN GREEN