Making music out of trash- article from Straits Times

jin

General

According to the straits times, in Paraguay, an orchestra is built for music lovers whom are unable to afford music lessons or music instruments.  Founded by environmental engineer Favio Chavez, a music lover, was working hand in hand with garbage pickers. They would comb through the slums of Paraguay to find recyclable items and turn them into music instruments.

This all started with a simple comment to one of the garbage pickers, whom soon spread the word of him offering free music lessons to students. Soon, he had soon started teaching music to children and teenagers. However, there was a problem: there was not enough music instruments to go around all the students. Also, Mr Chavez was not good with his hands- making a guitar out of a piece of wood and a few strings.

Thus he came up with a solution and teamed up with a skilled carpenter, Mr Nicholas Gomez, to make music instruments out of recyclable instruments. This time round however, the music instruments looked and more or less the same compared to the actual instrument.

Since then, they had formed the orchestra and have been invited to perform from Germany to Japan. Mr Chavez said that the message this orchestra had for the world was not to make the world forget about world-class musicians but showing people different ways to begin and make music.

Thanks to donations, the 40-plus member orchestra has been dedicated to making music and keenest in learning and improving. They attend lessons on every Saturday mornings and continue to play their ‘home-made’ instruments at performances.