Landfill Harmonic

Gr 7 Up—In the impoverished neighborhood of Cateura in Asuncion, Paraguay, most residents made their living as gancheros—picking through garbage in the landfill. Then Favio Chávez arrived in 2006. He was supposed to start a recycling program, but that failed because of a lack of infrastructure. What he did succeed in, however, was bringing music to the children of the barrio. Chávez offered free lessons with old ratty instruments. There was immediate interest, but good instruments were too valuable. Enter an ingenious ganchero, Nicolás Gómez, who began making them out of landfill throwaways—basses from oil drums, violins from metal containers, and more. Now the children were playing recycled instruments, but how far could they take them? Around the world, with the power of social media. This documentary follows the orchestra over several years from its inception to its eventual performances, still played on the same instruments before world audiences—from the first tentative notes of Mozart to a rousing performance of Beethoven. Viewers experience the orchestra's success through the eyes of its director, the children, their families, and other musicians who rallied to the cause. The program is almost exclusively in Spanish, with English subtitles. (The orchestra also served as the basis for Susan Hood's nonfiction title Ada's Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay.)