It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. And in no case is that more true than in this video. Music is built around passion and the passion of the kids in the Landfill Harmonic comes bursting through the screen. Their lives before music were nothing more than a banal day-to-day struggle. When the cost of instruments proved to be too much, the village sought to satisfy their hunger for the arts with these ingenious instrument creations. It is humbling as much as it is inspiring. If anything, it is solid proof that even in the most dreadful circumstances, having access to self-expression is as essential to sustaining human life as bread and water.
My soul is awakened by seeing the joy that music brings to the children in the village of Catuera, but at the same time it saddens me when I think about my 10 year old violin student's own reason for playing music: "I want to be better than everyone else at something". "Anything else?" "Nope". In her upper-middle class community, it has been pounded into her that beautiful music is accomplished by owning a $5,000 violin and a $2500 bow and churning out as many technically perfect etudes as she can. I can only hope that someday she will realize, as I hope so many others will, that music is US, it is every feeling that every person has ever felt captured on a sheet of paper. It is important to remember that beautiful music can only exist if we surrender ourselves to its message and embrace the depths of what makes us human.
For more insight into how the Landfill Harmonic was created, check out this extended version of the video above:
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