Young Venezuelans learn like Dudamel

Nucleos are swarming hives of cooperative activity. At San Agustin, students ages 7 to 18 wander purposefully between rehearsal rooms, noodling on trumpets and woodwinds, or sit thoughtfully absorbing stacks of music. In one classroom, a group of 7-, 8- and 9-year-olds loosens up with breathing exercises. In another, an older-student orchestra rehearses Arturo Marquez’s “Conga del Fuego Nuevo,” a standard in El Sistema’s repertory.

Older students, as they advance, eventually train younger ones, enhancing the feeling of being part of a surrogate extended family.

At the large nucleo in Dudamel’s native Barquisimeto, many students have disabilities. Children with Down syndrome, who tend to have small hands, are given tambourines and larger percussion instruments to tap. Hearing-impaired students perform sign-language interpretations of choral numbers alongside their hearing colleagues. A blind guitarist strums and croons a traditional bolero. It is routine in Barquisimeto to see a student in a wheelchair receive a helpful push up a ramp, or a deaf student patiently hold the door for a blind colleague.

Among El Sistema’s admirers is the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which has launched its own pilot program, Youth Orchestra L.A., with 150 students, in an effort to provide music instruction to children in underserved areas of Southern California.

“It would be great to export El Sistema to even more countries,” says Alexandra Pineda, 34, a music teacher at the Chapellin nucleo. “It would be excellent to have a little piece of Venezuela in all the world.”

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