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Aug 09, 2023

The Orchestra Turning Trash Into Music

Outside the Paraguayan capital of Asunción is a slum called Caetura. Around

Outside the Paraguayan capital of Asunción is a slum called Caetura. Around 40,000 people live there, and the beleaguered community is rife with poverty, drugs, and crime. As many as 40 percent of the kids who grow up there never finish school because their parents need them to work to help keep the family afloat. Making everything worse is the original purpose of the town: it serves as Asunción's largest trash dump, where millions of pounds of garbage are deposited each day.

But like the proverbial phoenix, a small group of kids in Caetura are proving that beauty can come out of the harshest environments. They are the members of the Recycled Orchestra.

The orchestra is the subject of a new documentary called Landfill Harmonic, which follows the slow rise of a community music program that has offered Caetura teenagers a chance to travel the world as musicians. Founded by environmental consultant and guitarist Favio Chávez, the orchestra plays on instruments made from trash. Over the course of 10 years, the orchestra has grown from just a few musicians to more than 35. The students have performed with heavy metal band Megadeth and with Metallica. They have their own instruments to practice on – violins made of paint cans, saxophones with keys that were once spoons and bottle caps, cellos made of oil drums. The orchestra has given kids a new chance at life and something to hold onto in a world filled with unpredictability and risk.

Landfill Harmonic Official Trailer

And according to ongoing research by the Auditory Neuroscience Lab at Northwestern University, these lessons could help their brain development in less obvious ways. Researchers have found that musical training in childhood can help close the academic gap between rich and poor students, and its effects on speech perception last into adulthood.

"Not only does music instruction improve communication skills and create a brain and nervous system that's attuned to sound, but music can fundamentally alter the nervous system to create better learners," neuroscience and lead researcher Nina Kraus told The Atlantic.

Director Favio Chavez with Luthier Nicholas Gomez

The orchestra's impact stretches far beyond the community of Caetura. It's forcing people to reexamine our fundamental understanding of musical instruments. The teenage musicians of the Recycled Orchestra couldn't possibly own something as valuable as a real violin or flute – it would be stolen or sold for drugs. Making the instruments out of trash means they can't be bought or sold. It means the only thing that matters is the music.

Carpenter and jack-of-all-trades Nicolás "Cola" Gómez is the luthier responsible for constructing the string instruments, and the work has had an enormous impact on his life. Before building instruments for Chávez, Gómez was a collector in the trash heap. He nearly died once; the work is dangerous, and temperatures in the dump can be scorching. Now, he returns to the dump only to scavenge food for his pigs and to find materials for new instruments. Although he doesn't play music himself, his skills in carpentry and masonry combined with Chávez's knowledge of music have led them to a system that can produce a violin in 2 to 3 days and a double-bass in a week – though it took years to get to that point.

"The first violin didn't have any sort of support inside it, and the tension of the strings would press down on the bridge so it bent the metal," said Brad Allgood, the director of Landfill Harmonic.

Even now, with a pattern for how to make the instruments and knowledge of which materials work best (a fork for the violin tailpiece, a baking tin and paint can for its body), the instruments can be finicky.

"Each instrument has its own idiosyncrasies, and you have to learn to play with the idiosyncrasies," Allgood said.

Since Gómez has no background in music, he's assisted by the older members of the orchestra in making adjustments or innovating the process. And he only works on the string instruments. Metallurgist Tito Romero is in charge of wind instruments, which take much longer because they need more fabricated pieces. But Gómez is a key figure in the building process, says the orchestra's founder, Chávez, "because he is the one person who has access to the landfill and knows where to find the necessary materials."

Still, one might wonder if instruments made of trash can ever sound as beautiful as the more traditionally built ones. Emanuele Marconi, conservator at the National Music Museum, says the answer is a matter of perspective.

"Every time we talk about beauty of sound we have to relate it to the society we’re referring to," Marconi said. "A classical violinist will describe the beauty of the sound of a violin in a way that's different than a fiddle player who's playing popular tunes. This taste has changed with the passage of time. It's still changing."

Performing with a handmade Cello

Marconi works on the museum's collection of 16,000 musical instruments to stabilize their state of conservation, and he's seen his fair share of instruments made from unconventional materials. There's the French flute maker, Claude Laurent, who built his flutes out of crystal and glass. During and after the Industrial Revolution, there was a huge push to experiment with new building materials, like celluloid and carbon fiber. All of these choices have an impact on the sound – and on the lifespan of the instrument.

"The action of playing causes wear to instruments, and this is one of the most common issues," Marconi said.

Regular playing plus environmental conditions – changing humidity and temperatures – means instruments used by members of the Recycled Orchestra do get worn out. But as Chávez says, the goal isn't to turn the instruments into a commodity – it's to give kids a chance to make something beautiful.

"People are focusing on the music and not just the symbolism of the instrument itself," Marconi said of the Recycled Orchestra's mission. "I think that's a really positive thing."