Social Change through Babumba and Beethoven

Musical Educational Ideals of El Sistema

Abstract

The El Sistema music education programme, which is based on a Venezuelan model developed in the 1970s, was introduced in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2010. One cornerstone of this choir and orchestra school is the use of music as a tool for individual and social development in order to provide a more democratic society through increased integration and decreased segregation. By using a discourse-analytical perspective as a starting point, this article aims to investigate how El Sistema legitimises music, and discuss discourses on music in relation to the idea of music as a tool for social and individual development. The results of our ethnographical study show that rhetoric related to music is largely based on aesthetic discourses developed during the 19th century in a manner similar to the late 19th-century Swedish folkbildningprojekt (adult education project). The discussion also addresses the blurring of aesthetic values and norms in the late modern era.