Music transforms Bolivia

Life moves slowly in San Ignacio de Velasco, a town deep in the jungle of Bolivia, 280 miles from the nearest city, where most streets are swathes of red earth, money is made off the land, and TV, for those who own one, is not an after-dinner ritual. It is not the kind of place one would normally seek out high culture.

But on a recent evening, off the manicured central plaza, the sonatas of Vivaldi and Haydn pour from the town's cathedral. Even more unusual is who is crowding many of the pews: sneaker-clad youths. And they are not under the duress of some teacher.

Their rapt attention is one of the most visible legacies of the International Festival of Renaissance and American Baroque Music, which may be leaving as big a mark on the small towns of eastern Bolivia as anything since the Jesuit missionaries 300 years ago.

Perhaps in few places on earth is music transforming the lives of a new generation more than in this remote lowland section of South America.

The biennial baroque festival, which wrapped up recently, draws artistes from across the globe who perform a repertoire of classical music that always includes at least one piece from the impressive, sacred archive begun by the missionaries in the 17th century.

The festival also attracts well-heeled tourists from Argentina, Chile, the United States and Europe.

Hope tunes

But, more important, it has spurred many of the region's children to gravitate towards the world of Bach and base clefs.

In recent years, some 2,500 youths from area towns, many of them indigenous, have enrolled in music schools, choruses and orchestras.

Some orchestras are fledgling, set up in church basements with members who still can't read notes. Others have begun to produce first-rate musicians.

“There has been a boom in orchestras in these mission towns,'' says Father Andreas Holl, a Franciscan priest originally from Austria whose church in San Ignacio de Velasco started a 35-member chorus for the community's neediest children last year.

“It's not just to pass the time, it is to fill them with something more. Music teaches them to express themselves, and perhaps that way, they learn to be non-violent.''

On a Thursday afternoon, Adelina Anori Cunanguira rushes to a rehearsal with the children's orchestra she conducts, ahead of their performance in the festival.

The children, who range in age from 7 to late teens, run through the church grounds in sandals, their instruments dangling at their sides. But as Anori Cunanguira directs them through a piece by Italian composer G.B. Bassani, they settle down.

“Don't forget to be here at 1pm tomorrow,'' she reminds them after practice. “I want you to concentrate and look at the director. Good luck.''

Anori Cunanguira epitomises the success that music has brought to the mission towns. A demure woman in her late twenties, she comes from the indigenous town of Urubicha, where a music school was set up in the mid-1990s as the Chiquitos Missions Festival, as the baroque event is known, was born.

She had never studied music but her father played the guitar and trumpet. Yet all her friends were joining, and, like any 16-year-old, she didn't want to miss out. Since then, she has mastered the clarinet and the violin, and today sings in a professional choir. She travels the world, playing in concerts and recording CDs.

Now she feels a duty to help other children in remote towns lift their lives through voice and Vivaldi.

For all its remoteness, San Ignacio de Velasco has its charms. True, most of the roads are dirt, and iPods and the internet are largely notional. But the town does exude a quaintness with its red tiled-roof shops. People seem happy and a veneer of wealth exists — some of it tied to tourism surrounding the festival.

Growing popularity

The musical conclave came together through a confluence of events in 1996, enabled by the diligent work of musicologists transcribing the ancient works of the missionaries. In its first year, 12 groups played in three towns. This year 22 countries participated, including 300 foreigners and 600 Bolivians, across 20 towns.

But Cecilia Kenning, the festival president, says the focus has always been the children.

The first music school was established in Urubicha, where residents speak the indigenous Guarayo language, and the model has since spread to towns across the eastern lowlands. They are run by schools, towns and local parishes and funded by a patchwork of private donations.

“This works very well in small towns, where there is no television,'' says Piotr Nawrot, a Polish missionary who has dedicated his life to transcribing the 12,000 manuscripts from the missions that include operas, instrumental music, sonatas and full symphonies.

Now students have a whole crop of role models, such as Anori Cunanguira. “I would love to be professional,'' says Juan Antiare, who sings bass in a choir called “Peace and Wellness'' at a parish run by Father Holl.

Some of his friends at school make fun of him, saying baroque music “puts them to sleep''. But he seems unfazed. “Becoming professional now is much more possible,'' he says.

Music is changing more than the local teens. Some politicians now run for office promising to start new choirs. Adults, too, feel swept up in the fervour. Aida Vaca Diez, a local grandmother, finds the changes in San Ignacio de Velasco so dramatic they are hard to articulate.

“Music touches the heart,'' she says. “You feel like you are in heaven when you listen to it.''