El Sistema, the Venezuelan youth orchestra program spearheaded by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, was created in 1975. It was the orchestra’s Proms debut in 2007, however, that cemented El Sistema’s place on the global stage, with Simon Rattle claiming that it was “the most important thing happening in music anywhere in the world.” Since then, it has become something of a sacred cow in Europe and North America: with only a handful of exceptions, the press and the classical music sphere have not analyzed the program properly, often failing to ask even the most basic questions and preferring uncritical embrace. Public discussion has been dominated by advocates, employees of El Sistema-related programs, and enthusiasts and journalists with little first-hand knowledge of Venezuelan realities, meaning that genuine debate has been limited and obvious problems have gone unchallenged.
Authoritarian El Sistema
A Counter-Reformation in Music Education
