If you believe it, you believe it
From utopia to the realization of a dream
In 2006, through an initiative of the Panguipulli City Council, the Panguipulli Municipal Corporation and the Chilean Youth and Children's Orchestra Foundation, the Panguipulli Symphony Orchestra was born, the seed that would give rise to what is now the Vive La Música program.
The improbability of establishing this dream due to the fact that Panguipulli is a town of 35,000 inhabitants with 62% of its population residing in rural areas, with 46.42% living in poverty and a total of 59.6% of the population lacking basic services - plus an average schooling of 6.9 years - was a challenge but not an obstacle to making this dream come true. With such a high socioeconomic disparity it was to be expected that the creation of a symphony orchestra would not be a priority in the municipality, but believing that music has the potential to be a tool for social transformation and integral development of children and young people, the meeting of willpower with the hard work of competent professionals made this dream possible. But the project could not stop there. In 2010, the Orchestra began to be managed by the Corporación de Adelanto Amigos de Panguipulli, signing a commitment to musical education with the 100 children who were part of the orchestra. After two years of performing throughout Chile, the orchestra returned to Panguipulli with extensive musical knowledge and questions that carried with them great responsibility: How to continue to achieve success? How to get more children to participate in the program? How to support the children's families? These were just some of the questions that surrounded the minds of the project managers, and after all these questions, in 2013 the Vive La Música program was born, in which I had the pleasure of doing my Fieldwork this year through The Global Leaders Program partnership.
The music cycle
Upon arriving in Panguipulli for the Fieldwork I was moved: still on the outbound flight by the natural beauty of the Andes, upon arriving in Panguipulli by its structure that revolves around the sense of community, and upon getting to know the Vive La Música program by its philosophy of education and management. The program bases its pedagogical division on four stages, namely: “Initial Exploration”, “Instrumental Learning”, “Basic Music Education” and “Leveling, and Intermediate Level”. Just as the development of the human organism happens in cycles, the musical development in the program was thought to be the same way, where in each stage the child and the youngster have their challenges and go through the necessary steps to obtain the skills and learning that compete in each phase. By developing activities in the four stages of the program I was able to better understand how it works. In the Initial Exploration stage, children have their first contact with music and the various musical instruments, and this discovery is made through weekly classes where Vive La Música teachers go to the kindergartens and teach classes to children between 0 and 4 years old. Many people wonder how a music class for this age group works, and during the Fieldwork I was able to better experience how this happens. Every class has its routine, starting with a welcome song to greet the children and prepare the environment for what will be worked on in class. This is followed by the introduction of the new instrument of the week, and this time because I am a violinist, we introduce the children to the violin. All the time, the use of playfulness and imagery is essential for the children to connect with what is being talked and taught. Then we move on to the Instrumental Learning stage, which involves children between the ages of 4 and 10 years old. In this stage the children choose an instrument according to what they discovered during the previous stage and to their personal taste, and are taught group classes according to the division of the instrument family (strings, woodwinds, and percussion). Working with this stage was challenging but at the same time very rewarding. Building the basis for learning an instrument is something that requires a lot of responsibility, so it is necessary to have a lot of wisdom to use the right words, to demonstrate the correct posture to the instrument, how to produce a good sound, among other aspects that are fundamental for the student to have a strong solid foundation in the instrument they had chosen. Full of energy and eager for knowledge, the children in this age group demanded a different kind of approach, with activities that were done using the chosen musical instrument. At this stage, among the fundamentals is the ability to play open strings, and it was with this parameter that I worked with the children: I played Brazilian folk melodies and they followed in the stipulated tempo by playing the corresponding open strings.
An interesting point to highlight is how the perception of pulse, rhythm, and form are more developed in this stage than in the previous one. It is remarkable that the lessons given in the previous stage positively influence the process of acquiring and fixing these skills, which are more easily grasped when playing the instrument.
From then on, the children are more prepared to participate in groups such as the "Ensemble Inicial", part of the next stage, that of Basic Music Education. By participating in one of the group's rehearsals, other positive impacts of the project's constancy were noticed, highlighting here, besides the musical progress, the increase in social-affective skills, point that the Vive La Música project fosters and values since its early stages. When in a group such as an ensemble, for example, the students are inserted in a kind of society of their own, which has its own rules - in this case the musical rules! At this stage the challenges are to have all attention to understand the dynamics of how the conductor's conducting gestures work while listening to the voices played by the other instruments and performing their part. Multiple tasks? Yes, but when you have each of these skills worked on progressively as this program is designed to do, students feel confident to begin to take on the musical performance.
The program culminates in stage 4, Leveling and Intermediate Level. After the process of technical, musical, and socio-affective development, the students move on to their musical journey with individual instrument lessons for improvement. It seeks to prepare students with all the necessary tools to enter a career linked to music at a higher technical or university level, both nationally and internationally. Working with the students at this stage has reflected the meaning of "teaching is learning twice". I had the opportunity to conclude the Fieldwork with a concert entirely dedicated to Brazilian music, and the students of this stage participated in this closing with a performance of "Bachianas No. 4 (Prelude)" by Heitor Villa-Lobos. A violin ensemble was assembled for the occasion, and I had the honor of leading it, conducting and rehearsing during the week, and playing with them in the final concert. The listening to Villa-Lobos' intricate harmonies combined with the sublimity of his music made the rehearsals a moment of discovery for those who were not yet familiar with the works of this exponent Brazilian composer.
The performance of the work was further intensified by its context, which was the centennial anniversary of the 1922 Week of Modern Art in Brazil, an event that was a milestone in the Brazilian cultural scene, transforming old paradigms and references into a new aesthetic in music as well as in paintings, literature, and architecture.
Having this information, the students and their performance became an integral part of this very important celebration for Brazilians, also leaving their mark on this event of national relevance for Brazil.
Cultural Exchange
One of the pillars of this Fieldwork proposal was to promote musical cultural interchange in a multilateral way. To this end, during the lessons of all stages, both Brazilian folkloric musical works and works from the classical and popular canon were played. In stages 1 and 2, I carried out activities in which the children explored body percussion and their sense of proprioception to develop the ability to identify the pulse of music using works from the Brazilian folk repertoire.
With the technique of repetition, at the end of the lesson they then began to identify how the violin sounds, to have in their melodic repertoire three works from a different culture and to know the history behind these works.
During the classes for both stages I noticed how there is an appreciation of the Mapuche culture, meaning, the native indigenous people of Chile. In some of the kindergartens the routine welcome songs were sung by the children in Spanish and in Mapuche, thus highlighting the appreciation of the community identity transmitted from the earliest stages of childhood. It is essential to understand our origin and descent in order to have an understanding of how history directly influences the present day, and the way this is done in Panguipulli using music as a tool to keep the original traditions alive is praiseworthy.
Development and Impact
Transitioning between tradition and innovation, Panguipulli will inaugurate this year its first theater, the Teatro Educativo de las Artes. As a tangible example of the impact that the investment in the dream of perpetuating the Panguipulli Symphony Orchestra has had, the Theater will be home to performances by the artistic groups that are part of the Vive La Música program as well as performances by guest artists.
At the end of Fieldwork I had the opportunity to get to know this space and see that Panguipulli will soon gain a stage to match the high standards of the great things it does there.
Although I could not communicate in Spanish because I did not fully master the language, I did it entirely in English during my stay, and even with the challenges of this journey at the end of nine days in Panguipulli I felt embraced by the community, the collaborators, teachers, and students of the Vive La Música program. I realized that when music speaks, regardless of the language spoken, all people understand each other.
Barbara Domingos
2022 Cohort Member, Global Leaders Program
Music Diplomacy - Stories from the World has partnered with The Global Leaders Program to share highlights of music diplomacy cases from around the world. The Global Leaders Program empowers cultural changemakers to grow organizations that impact communities through an innovative twelve-month Executive MBA in Arts Innovation. Led in partnership with nine top universities and think tanks, a world-class faculty and a network of institutional fieldwork hosts spanning 40+ nations, the program is offered annually to an executive cohort of 60 accomplished arts professionals from around the globe.
