The world sends us garbage, we send back music.” – Favio Chavez, Orchestra Leader
Cateura, Paraguay is a city built on a landfill. The nearly 25,000 families there, who live in deep poverty, rely on garbage picking to stay alive. With their children, they rummage for something they might recycle or sell in the 1500 tons of trash brought in each day. The UNICEF report released in 2010 is pretty sobering.
I had never heard of Cateura or the people there until last December when this video caught my eye –
Landfill Harmonic film teaser from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo.
Have you ever been so touched by Bach’s Concerto No. 1? I found myself reading every article (like this one, and this one) I could find about the people who caught the vision of hope to build not only instruments, but an orchestra’s worth of instruments, from trash. It’s a story of endurance, a story of hope, and a story of recycling. But, it’s also a story about me, about people I love, people I don’t know, and likely about you. It’s a story about seeing greatness and possibility. It’s a story about new beginnings.
I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life when—through my own choices or through the whim of circumstance—I am left with trash; left with broken pieces of what might have been, and what didn’t work out; with regrets, remnants of relationships, or rusted dreams.
It was one of my wisest friends, a woman with an old soul and a great jump shot, who told me something I will never forget about trash – the kind that comes from our mistakes, our circumstances, or our poor choices. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Sometimes you’ll look at your trash and realize that it is beyond repair. You simply can’t fix it. That’s not the time to despair. It’s time to move forward; it’s time to recycle.” Through tears, I protested. I told her that I was sure that no use or good could come from the broken pieces I had created.
What she said next caught me off guard and gave me a peace and hope that lasted. She said, “In that case, what you have is spiritual compost.”
The earth is perhaps the best teacher, (and the best composter.) Do you love trees? The rain on your face? The whole earth is conspiring to remind us that even the things that evaporate, rot, break, crumble, grow stagnant, or die are transformed into beauty – perhaps over months, perhaps over eons. But nothing, nothing is wasted.
Will you invest the creativity and love to repurpose the past and create beauty – even music?
I believe in recycling. I believe in spiritual compost. I believe in being someone who will take garbage and send back music. I believe that sometimes we really can’t go back – the pieces are broken. However, I believe with creativity, patience, and loving hands, we can go forward. The broken, throw away pieces can become more than we imagine. But best of all, I believe that all that recycling will end in joyful noise.
Visit the Landfill Harmonic Facebook page to learn more about the documentary and see pictures of Cateura’s young musicians.