Changing Lives by Tricia Tunstall

Author:Tricia Tunstall [Tunstall, Tricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Another dichotomy we tend to take for granted, Eric continues, is the relationship between entrepreneurial and artistic energy. “Here in the States, we think we have to choose one or the other,” he says. “If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to sacrifice your artistic goals. But in El Sistema those two kinds of energy seem to be integrated.” He describes Venezuelan núcleo directors who are at once “ferocious teaching artists” and avid activists for the expansion of their programs, and he urges the Fellows to be open to using their creativity in every aspect of their work.

Eric asks the Fellows to explore their own individual answers to a question central to their mission. “We are all here,” he says, “because we assume that the experience of learning deeply inside complex music is an effective way to support and develop urban youth. Why do we assume this?”

This is, indeed, the inquiry at the center of the enterprise. The leaders of the Venezuelan Sistema have their own answers, based in their culture and their experience. But for the Fellows—as for all music educators in the United States—the question requires a hard look at basic assumptions about music, about learning, about childhood and poverty and possibility.

“The Fellows are on a quest to determine what is the right verb to use when we talk about moving El Sistema from Venezuela to the United States,” Eric tells me. “Do we mean to ‘adopt’ the Sistema? Or ‘adapt’ it? Transplant it, or re-create it? It’s hard to say. The truth is, we’re still not sure what this process actually looks like.”

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