Happy Thanksgiving to all of of you! Thank you thank you thank you for reading my blog. I appreciate each and every one of you, and hope you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving Day today. 🙂 I’m at home enjoying a day of rest and yummy food with a small group of family members. It will be my first time hosting guests for a Thanksgiving meal. Wish me luck.
We are so lucky in the United States for many reasons. We have food to eat, water to drink, education, and endless opportunities. Our children have access to great instruments and music teachers to better their lives through music and the arts. This is something we often take for granted. In many parts of the world children can’t learn to play an instrument, as they are too poor to afford a music teacher or an instrument.
Today I want to share an inspiring story about a small town in Paraguay called Cateura. The town is literally built on a landfill and in the past the local children used to spend most of their time playing in the trash. Fast forward 5 years later, a creative musician and teacher, Favio Chavez began the “Landfill Harmonic”, an orchestra for children who play not just any instruments, but instruments built out of trash. Forks, bottle caps, oil tin cans and basically anything from the landfill is pieced together to make violins, cellos, saxophones and more. Surprisingly these instruments sound really good!
The kids in the orchestra stay out of trouble, and because the instruments are made of trash, their family doesn’t have to worry about them being stolen for drug money. Favio Chavez, the brilliant music teacher behind this project says: “The world sends us garbage. We send back music.” How inspiring! What a great reminder of how lucky we are here and how much we have to be grateful for especially in the world of music and instruments.
I invite you to watch Landfill Harmonic’s movie. Share it with your children to show them what music is like elsewhere in the world.
Happy Thanksgiving to you once again. Leave a comment below and tell me why you are thankful for music in your life. How has it made your life better? Subscribe to the newsletter and “like us” on Facebook. Have a beautiful day and I’ll catch many of you just over a week from now at our winter recitals.
Gratefully,
Cassie
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