Music on Monday
Summer 2024 - caring for our world
Summer 2024
29th April
The Recycled Orchestra
In the city of Asuncion, which is the capital of South American country Paraguay, lies the country’s largest landfill site- Cateura. An estimated 500 gancheros (recyclers) work at Cateura, where 1.5 tonnes of rubbish are deposited daily, separating plastic and aluminium that they sell on for as little as 15p a bag. Among the mounds of refuse, however, are a lot of materials that could (in the hands of a very clever and intuitive person!) be recycled into musical instruments- materials such as used oven trays, wooden pallets, metal cutlery and utensils, paint pots etc. Cast aside by the 2 million residents of Asuncion, they are highly valued by Nicolás Gómez, who picks them out to make violins, guitars and cellos. Gómez, 48, was a carpenter and ganchero but now works for Favio Chávez, the conductor of Paraguay's one and only landfill orchestra.
The Cateura Orchestra of Recycled Instruments is made up of 30 schoolchildren – the sons and daughters of recyclers – whose instruments are forged from the city's rubbish. And while its members learned to play amid the flies and stench of Cateura, they are now receiving worldwide acclaim, including a recent concert in Amsterdam that included Pachelbel's Canon.
Favio Chavez recognised the need for the poverty stricken children of Asuncion to learn music- something he thought would being them mental wellbeing and broaden their horizons. However, a violin costs more than a house to the families who live in the slums, and therefore would never be able to afford the luxury of a traditionally made instrument. The incredible recycling skills of Nicolás Gómez meant that so much of the rubbish that would have otherwise clogged up the landfill site was put to extremely good use and made into musical instruments. Incredibly, they sound great too- considering what they’re made of!
22nd April
Joni Mitchell
“Big Yellow Taxi” by Canadian- American singer/song writer Joni Mitchell is an environmentalist anthem which criticises the destruction of our planet. The line “Don’t it always seem to go, That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone” makes us stop and think about the way we treat our planet before it’s too late.
“I wrote ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on my first trip to Hawaii,” Mitchell explained in 1996. “I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart… this blight on paradise. That’s when I sat down and wrote the song.”
This is a perfect song for us to listen to on 'Earth Day 2024'. Earth Day is marked on 22 April each year. The first Earth Day was held in the USA in 1970, in response to a spill from an oil tanker. It has since grown to become and global event, during which as many as 1 billion people around the world mark the need for action on the environment and living sustainably. It helps to raise awareness of the need to protect Earth's natural resources for future generations and allows us time to consider our contribution to this.
15th April
Hans Zimmer
Today most people first hear orchestral music in the cinema or online – and perhaps more than any other composer, trailblazer Hans Zimmer has helped to shape the sound of today’s film, TV and games music. He has written the music for over 150 films including The Lion King, Madagascar, The Simpsons Movie, Kung Fu Panda and TV series like Blue Planet II. Using driving rhythms, hypnotic chord patterns and electronic samples he has created unique and powerful soundtracks that have influenced a whole generation of musicians.
Hans Zimmer composed Earth especially for BBC Ten Pieces - a collection of classical music (there are in fact 40 pieces!) which have been selected to inspire and educate young musicians, broadening their cultural capital and introducing them to music they might not have otherwise listened to. This piece is his personal celebration of the planet we live on and the perfect piece to start off our Summer Term, where our focus is on caring for the environment. In this piece, Hans captures the majesty and beauty of our home, as if seen from space.
This piece has been written for live performance and Mrs Harper will be teaching it to some of our instrumentalists this term. Hans set every child a challenge when he wrote this piece - to take his piece and create something new from it. In his own words: "The piece of music I've written is just the beginning of the sentence. I want you guys to finish it!"