World Famous Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, Paraguay Visits Jacksonville
GlobalJax hosted members of the world famous Recycled Orchestra of Cateura to perform in Northeast Florida and share their music played from instruments recycled from trash found in a landfill. Participants held school performances at the Pine Forest School of The Arts, Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, and LaVilla School of the Arts. In addition, the group also publicly performed at the Riverside Arts Market, and the Corazon Cinema and Café. The recycled instruments have enabled them to create music and share it on tours around the world. The group has performed at the UN, for European monarchs and Pope Francis, as well as alongside contemporary heavyweights such as Stevie Wonder and Metallica. The group plays Mozart, Frank Sinatra, and Paraguayan folk music.
Cateura is a small village of 2,500 families built around a landfill on the outskirts of Paraguay’s capital city, Asunción. One of the poorest communities in South America, Cateura is a dumping ground for more than 1,500 tons of waste each day. The community has no safe drinking water, little access to electricity or sanitation, and disease is rampant as a result. Many families live by scavenging trash from the landfill to resell. School attendance is only around 40% for children in the city and prospects for most of the children born in Cateura is bleak. Children often fall into drugs, gang violence and delinquency, but music has been an escape for around 400 children who attend the music school in Cateura, and the number is growing.
Sources: NPR, Global Times
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