Misión posible / Mission possible

(Collaboration published on May 22, 2008, in the Madrid newspaper ABC, on the occasion of the awarding of the 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts to Venezuela's National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras)


Just a few years ago, news began to spread across Europe that a profound social revolution was taking place in Venezuela; that an effective system had been launched enabling tens of thousands of children and young people to change their life circumstances -circumstances dominated by a pervasive reality of poverty that inevitably led them toward violence, drugs, and crime; that all of this was happening through music, and more specifically through an extensive network of youth and children's orchestras and choirs; and that, in addition, the highest imaginable levels of musical excellence were being achieved in that country, through the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra and its extraordinarily young conductor, Gustavo Dudamel.
In recent months, everything related to Venezuela's National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras has been caught up in a whirlwind of attention, spreading far and wide the message that what once seemed incredible is now a tangible reality -something we can regularly enjoy on this side of the Atlantic thanks to the increasingly frequent tours that bring the orchestra and its conductor throughout Europe, including Spain. It is therefore no surprise that the creator and driving force behind the System, Maestro José Antonio Abreu, has lately spent most of his time flying over oceans and continents to receive the numerous awards that, in recognition of a work that borders more on the miraculous than the believable, are continuously being bestowed upon him by the world's most diverse institutions.
Those of us who know, admire, and cherish Abreu and the "young people" of Venezuela's Orchestra System (including 30 Spaniards from the Jonde and the Presjovem Orchestra, who recently collaborated with the Simón Bolívar in Caracas) are certain that this frenetic series of accolades -now joined by the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts- will not flatter their vanity, but will immediately be turned into a personal offering by all of them to the System itself, to its greater glory, so that its example may spread beyond Venezuela's borders, as it has already begun to do for some time now.
But no less important for the System itself is that it continue to expand within its own country; because, after benefiting 400,000 Venezuelan children and young people in its 33 years of existence, it now brandishes as its major future project what Abreu calls "Mission Music", consisting of nothing less than extending its reach to one million young musicians within just a few years. Naturally, only a small fraction of them will become professional musicians in the future; but all will have had the opportunity -thanks to music and its collective practice, both orchestral and choral- to grow as human beings in contact with a reality very different from that of their social and family environment, which in most cases is highly disadvantaged; and in the future they will fill concert halls and auditoriums, as audience members whose love for music was nurtured under privileged conditions.
My most heartfelt and effusive congratulations, then, to Venezuela's System of Youth and Children's Orchestras; but also congratulations -no less warm and profound- to all of us who are convinced that music is not only the best vehicle for conveying feelings and communicating emotions, but also for ethically transforming society through the prior psychological transformation, by artistic and emotional means, of all those who create or perform it.

Madrid, May 2008