Rethinking Social Action Through Music
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G Rethinking Social Action Through Music EOFFREY The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools B GEOFFREY BAKER AKER Following on from his groundbreaking study of Venezuela’s El Sistema, Baker offers a courageous and unsettling exploration of Social Action Through Music. It is a profound and lively examination of this important as well as complex issue. Wide-ranging in its analysis, honest, and wise, it is indispensable reading for all those interested in the discussion around the social impact of making music. Dr Graça Mota, Research Centre in Psychology of Music and Music R Education, Porto Polytechnic. Former chair of the El Sistema Special Interest Group at the International Society for Music Education ETHINKING Baker deftly unravels the complex and sometimes contradictory strands in the 25-year history of this flagship project. He then uses his analysis as a springboard for grounded reflection on S what truly socially effective music programmes could look like. This book will be an important OCIAL resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike. John Sloboda, OBE, FBA Research Professor, Guildhall School of Music & Drama A President of SIMM (Social Impact of Making Music) CTION T This ground-breaking book examines the development of the Red de Escuelas de Música de H Medellín (the Network of Music Schools of Medellín), founded in Colombia’s second city in 1996 R OUGH as a response to its reputation as the most dangerous city on Earth. Inspired by the Venezuelan program El Sistema, the Red is nonetheless markedly different: its history is one of multiple reinventions and a continual search to improve its music education and better realise its social M goals. Based on a year of intensive fieldwork in Colombia and written by the author of El Sistema: U S Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth (2014), this volume offers fresh insights on the past, present, and IC future of Social Action Through Music and its evolution in both scholarship and practice. This is the author-approved edition of this Open Access title. As with all Open Book publications, this entire book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed GEOFFREY BAKER and digital editions, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found at www. The Search for Coexistence and openbookpublishers.com Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools Cover image: Medellin, Colombia. Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash at https://unsplash.com/photos/ emtQBNCrU3Q . Cover Design by Anna Gatti. Rethinking Social book eebook and OA editions also available Action Through OBP Music RETHINKING SOCIAL ACTION THROUGH MUSIC Rethinking Social Action through Music The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools Geoffrey Baker https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2021 Geoffrey Baker This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Geoffrey Baker, Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0243 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license please visit https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0243#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0243#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 9781800641266 ISBN Hardback: 9781800641273 ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781800641280 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781800641297 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781800641303 ISBN XML: 9781800641310 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0243 Cover image: Medellin, Colombia. Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash at https:// unsplash.com/photos/emtQBNCrU3Q. Cover design by Anna Gatti. The dominant systems of education are based on three principles—or assumptions at least—that are exactly opposite to how human lives are actually lived. […] First, they promote standardization and a narrow view of intelligence when human talents are diverse and personal. Second, they promote compliance when cultural progress and achievement depend on the cultivation of imagination and creativity. Third, they are linear and rigid when the course of each human life, including yours, is organic and largely unpredictable. As the rate of change continues to accelerate, building new forms of education on these alternative principles is not a romantic whimsy: it’s essential to personal fulfillment and to the sustainability of the world we are now creating. Sir Ken Robinson —Pero una cosa es creer en la música como un oficio, y otra prometer que salvaremos a un país o a la humanidad con ella —contestó Sánchez. Pablo Montoya, La escuela de música For Miranda Table of Contents List of Acronyms xi Acknowledgements xiii Introduction 1 PART I 1. Creating, Redirecting, and Reforming the Red 39 2. The Red Pushes Back: Tensions, Debates, and Resistance 99 3. The Red through a Social Lens 153 4. The New Image of Medellín to the World 209 PART II 5. Change 265 6. Challenges 315 7. Possibilities of Transformation 351 Afterword 383 Bibliography 411 List of Figures 443 Index 447 List of Acronyms ACI Agency for Cooperation and Investment ASA Art as Social Action BIPOC Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour BLM Black Lives Matter CLCS Conservatory Lab Charter School CM Community Music ESI El Sistema-inspired IDB Inter-American Development Bank ISME International Society for Music Education LAO League of American Orchestras MVLM Medellín Vive La Música NEOJIBA Núcleos Estaduais de Orquestras Juvenis e Infantis da Bahia OG Orquestra Geração PBL Project-Based Learning SATM Social Action Through Music SBYO Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra SIG Special Interest Group SIMM Social Impact of Making Music SJME Social Justice in Music Education TED Technology, Entertainment, Design xii Rethinking Social Action through Music Geoffrey Baker is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Director of Research at the music charity Agrigento. He is the author of three previous books and numerous essays and documentary films on music in Latin America. For his blog and further information, please visit https://geoffbakermusic.co.uk. Acknowledgments A book such as this, founded on fieldwork, is a collective construction. So much of it is based on conversations and interviews, reading and listening to others’ ideas, and watching others at work, that the employees and students of the Red (the Network of Music Schools of Medellín) are really co-creators. I am extremely grateful to all of them for their warmth, openness, and patience. I particularly thank everyone who agreed to be interviewed or who conversed with me at greater length. The list would be too long to name everyone, but in the process of writing this book I have relistened to every interview and reread every field note, so nothing and no one has been forgotten. While it is inevitable that my perspective will not reflect the views of everyone in such a large organization and will contradict the opinions of some, I learnt from every encounter, conversation, and observation, and I applaud all those who have played a part in the Red’s search for coexistence and citizenship through music education. I am indebted to the general directors who opened the doors of the Red to me and kept them open at different times over a period of eight years: Marta Eugenia Arango, Ana Cecilia Restrepo, Juan Fernando Giraldo, and Vania Abello. I was also fortunate to receive the support of Mábel Herrera at the Ministry of Civic Culture. I am hugely grateful to Aníbal Parra and Luis Fernando Franco, who were vital pieces of the puzzle and left a significant mark on this book. Their professional and personal support was invaluable. A number of people with expertise in Social Action Through Music or closely related fields agreed to read and comment on my draft manuscript. My warmest thanks to them for undertaking such a major task. In alphabetical order: Dr Christine D’Alexander, Northern Illinois University, Co-Chair of the ISME Music Education for Social Change SIG, Teaching Artist and Program Director at YOLA (2011–17); Dr Anna xiv Rethinking Social Action through Music Bull, Portsmouth University, author of Class, Control, and Classical Music (OUP, 2019); Dr Louise Godwin, musician, researcher, and arts manager, formerly with an El Sistema-inspired program in Australia; Dr Graça Mota, Porto Polytechnic, former chair of the ISME El Sistema SIG; Dr Ludim Pedroza, Texas State University, Venezuelan author of academic articles on El Sistema; Dr Andrea Rodríguez, researcher and National Psychosocial Lead at the Colombian program Batuta; and Professor John Sloboda, OBE, FBA, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, President of SIMM (Social Impact of Making Music). Additionally, Ana Cecelia Restrepo