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A NEW book by a British academic has charged that the Venezuelan-born classical-music-for-all program is run like something between a corporation and a cult. I’ve not seen the book yet, but David Ng of the LA Times interviews its author, Geoffrey Baker. Here’s Baker — whose book is published by Oxford University Press — discussing Jose Antonio Abreu:
El Sistema has a monopoly on classical music in Venezuela. Abreu is famed for his intolerance of criticism. There are many stories of people who have crossed him, and have been blacklisted and fired. Everyone depends on El Sistema to a degree and to go against it is professional suicide. None of these people would have spoken to me on the record. They were saying strong things. Anonymity was a first step to opening up.
The program’s most famous alum, of course, is LA Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who leads the El Sistema-affiliated Simon Bolivar Orchestra (pictured.)
The Guardian has a story by Baker in which he quotes someone calling the program “a model of tyranny.” This article takes a broader look at the program, especially in the UK.
[Correction made above to fix the press that will publish Baker’s book.]
It was only a matter of time before the plutocracy went to work on El Sistema. It is entirely state funded (an anathema to neoliberalism,) it represents an ethos of leveling social classes (ditto,) and, god forbid some, of its leaders were close to Hugo Chavez. So, of course, we are reading about the evil, totalitarian El Sistema, etc., etc.
From the descriptions, the book’s observations hardly seem founded in scientific observation, and yet the Guardian article says it is published by Oxford, and your comment says Yale. Whichever, it leaves one with an uncomfortable feeling about the academic standards of university publishing houses when it comes to discounting all those evil Latin American socialists. Or have I become too cynical? In any case, Baker’s hatchet job isn’t going to stop El Sistema nor its remarkable successes, much to the the discomfort of the plutocracy that runs American classical music.
I’m beginning to doubt my summary judgment above since I haven’t read the book. Some of the negative reviews of the book leave me just as doubtful about its opponents as about the general theme itself. There have been suggestions that Sistema is in reality linked to reactionary social and cultural forces in Venezuela — as orchestral culture often is. The idea is by no means implausible. I’ve ordered the book. I need to see how Geoffrey Baker sorts all this out. No easy task.