 The arts are powerful. This is something that should never be forgotten, especially in times like the present when arts and music programs are often among the first casualties in budget cuts necessitated by economic strain. However, the ability of the arts, and of music in particular, to have an incredible impact on people’s lives is both remarkable and inspiring. This is true even in a place as isolated and marginalized as rural Bolivia, where I spent the past summer teaching violin and directing orchestras of children and young adults between the ages of 6 and 25 through an internship with La Asociación Pro Arte y Cultura, a Bolivian organization responsible for the area’s budding music programs.For two months, I lived and worked in three mission towns located roughly 12 hours east of the city of Santa Cruz and populated almost exclusively by indigenous people, one of the poorest groups in what is already the poorest country of South America. Every day, I witnessed and dealt with the shortage of resources, lack of educational opportunities, routinely poor sanitation, ubiquitous problems with alcohol abuse and domestic violence, and the frustration of talented, hardworking students who knew they had potential that they would not have the opportunity to fully realize. As a teacher, the severe lack of resources was a striking issue. On my very first day of teaching, the A string on my student Carlos’s violin broke during his lesson, and the town’s entire music program only had one extra string—a G string. I soon discovered that when a string breaks, it is typically tied together and restrung, or replaced with a piece of industrial wire. In the face of these realities, the large box that I brought to Bolivia filled with strings, shoulder rests, music books, chin rests, rosin, and chromatic tuners generously donated by Johnson String made a world of difference.When I gave one of the donated  |
  chromatic tuners to Adelid, one of the music program directors in San Miguel, he looked at me, then looked up at the sky and said "Gracias, gracias" ("Thank you, thank you") and kissed the tuner. In a place like San Miguel where there are no pianos, chromatic tuners, or metronomes available, many of the town's instruments had not been tuned to an accurate A in months. Nearly all of the students had to play without shoulder rests and some did not even have chin rests. For students like Robin, a 10-year-old boy who desperately wanted to learn to play the violin well, receiving a shoulder rest enabled him to play with better position and helped him make dramatic improvements in just the two months that I worked with him. Despite these incredible challenges, the nascent music programs--some of which are less than a year old--in each of these misiones provide unique outlets for these students that give them feelings of worth and accomplishment that they do not get anywhere else. Seeing the excitement in my student Joaquín's eyes after he learned a new technique and watching 17-year-old Rafael sit outside the music room all afternoon, playing his violin instead of becoming involved in petty crime or alcohol--all-too-common activities for bright, bored students with nowhere to go--revealed to me the power of the arts to advance social justice and truly make a difference in the lives of youths even in places as remote as rural Bolivia. --Megan McPhee Princeton University Class of 2011 February 13, 2009 |
