https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsTQ04BOeCoThe kingdom of God is like a garbage dump … trash and refuse as far as the eye can see; where poverty and pollution rule and reign. Until a few men of great imagination started picking through the garbage, and where everyone else saw useless trash, they saw musical instruments. People of great ingenuity beat the garbage into violins, cellos, trumpets and clarinets and taught some of the poorest kids on the planet how to play music. Now, everywhere they play hearts begin to sing, people begin to hope, beauty breaks into the dark and ugly chaos we have made of God’s good creation. Every time they play there is a kind of resurrection.
This piece by 60 Minutes is one of the more stunning redemptive stories I’ve seen of late. It’s about an unlikely music program found in Cateura, Paraguay, a small city built up entirely around a garbage dump. Here the poorest of the poor built a city around a garbage dump where they pick through the trash for recyclable materials. That’s how they make their living … trash pickers. It’s a grim and grimy place.
Then some guy living there decides to take discarded wood and metal and make musical instruments out of them. Another guy starts teaching kids how to play them. All of it stemming from recycled oil cans, bottle caps, drainpipes, and bottle caps. Pretty soon they’ve got an orchestra. They’ve got no electricity, no clean water, no clean air, but they’ve got music.
Somebody had the imagination to take the discarded poor – invisible to most of us – make them into an orchestra and place them front and center for all the world to see. That’s ingenuity.
A documentary called Landfillharmonic is being made about this recycled music program. The project is the brain child of Alejandra Amarilla, the film’s executive producer. It’s slated for release in 2014. Phoenix-based producer Juliana Peñaranda-Loftus, and executive producing partner Rodolfo Madero are also involved in the film. From their website:
“The world generates about a billion tons of garbage a year. Those who live with it and from it are the poor – like the people of Cateura, Paraguay. And here they are transforming it into beauty. Landfill Harmonic follows the orchestra as it takes its inspiring spectacle of trash-into-music around the world. Follow the lives of a garbage picker, a music teacher and a group of children from a Paraguayan slum that out of necessity started creating instruments entirely out of garbage. Landfill Harmonic is a beautiful story about the transformative power of music, which also highlights two vital issues of our times: poverty and waste pollution.”
I can’t wait to see it.
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