![\"Portada](\"https:\/\/16.147.243.36\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Portada-Libro.jpeg\")
<\/a>Silva-Ferrer\u2019s principal thesis, drawing on the work of the prominent anthropologist and historian Fernando Coronil, is that we cannot understand Venezuelan culture without understanding oil. Securing access to petro-dollars is pretty much the only game in town in Venezuela. Thinking about El Sistema, then, it\u2019s surely more than just a coincidence that this huge (and hugely expensive) music education program was created in a country with vast oil reserves by a man with a PhD in petroleum economics.<\/p>\nAlong with the 20th<\/sup>-century petro-state came a whole cultural apparatus and a small number of \u201ccultural caudillos,\u201d as Silva-Ferrer calls them \u2013 including Jos\u00e9 Antonio Abreu. These individuals had the power and skill to tap the state\u2019s huge resources. In many ways, they were reflections in the cultural sphere of the series of enchanting presidents who emerged alongside the \u201cmagical state\u201d (as Coronil calls it in his influential book) and tried to pull illusions and miracles of modernity out of a hat. (Recall the frequent characterization of El Sistema as the \u201cVenezuelan musical miracle.\u201d) These elites constantly tried to monopolize the \u201cbooty\u201d of oil, and their efforts were accompanied by a tendency towards arbitrariness and authoritarianism.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s interesting to think about El Sistema, then, as typifying the kind of modernization programs unfolded by the Venezuelan petro-state throughout the 20th<\/sup> century, run by a man with specialized knowledge of the workings of an oil economy and, thanks to his political experience and contacts, privileged access to petro-dollars.<\/p>\nI was also struck by Silva-Ferrer\u2019s characterization of Ch\u00e1vez as a charismatic, messianic, authoritarian leader, the latest in a long line in Venezuelan history. He depicts a renaissance of the 20th<\/sup>-century magical state in the 21st<\/sup> century, with Ch\u00e1vez now playing the role of magician-in-chief. He focuses on the continuities between earlier presidents such as Carlos Andr\u00e9s P\u00e9rez (CAP) and Ch\u00e1vez, but this also made me think about continuities between Ch\u00e1vez and Abreu.<\/p>\nOne of the big questions that hung over my project, and to which I offer only speculative answers in my book, is how Abreu survived the transition to Chavism, given that the two were political enemies \u2013 Ch\u00e1vez had tried to oust Abreu\u2019s mentor CAP in 1992 \u2013 and the president disliked classical music. What I see from this book is, firstly, how much Ch\u00e1vez and Abreu actually resembled each other, despite their stark political differences (the adjectives that Silva-Ferrer uses to describe the president \u2013 charismatic, messianic, authoritarian \u2013 recur in depictions of El Maestro); and secondly, Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s magical state had as much use for a conductor of spectacles as CAP\u2019s did.<\/p>\n
Seeing Chavism as the latest cycle in a long-running history and the most recent incarnation of the magical state helps to explain the longevity of Abreu and El Sistema. They are cultural trappings of the Venezuelan petro-state rather than of any particular political party or program, and they can serve its different manifestations and leaders equally well. This does not make them apolitical, however, so much as politically promiscuous \u2013 their allegiance is to oil, and they align themselves with whomever controls it.<\/p>\n
Reading Silva-Ferrer\u2019s account of Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s TV program \u201cAl\u00f3 Presidente\u201d rang all sorts of Sistema bells:<\/p>\n
\n- the delegitimation of the past and the presentation of the leader as a catalyst for transition to the future<\/li>\n
- a love of theatricality<\/li>\n
- creating a sense of proximity by staging scenes where the leader mingles with the people without barriers or intermediaries, even though accessing the leader through formal channels is extremely hard<\/li>\n
- the substitution of a rationally operating bureaucracy by an emotional (and religious) framework<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Silva-Ferrer\u2019s description of the Bolivarian project as based around vertical, military-style orders, lacking a solid theoretical basis, and displaying excessive pragmatism, could apply just as well to El Sistema. The continuities between El Sistema and Chavism are just as fascinating as their profound political differences.<\/p>\n
I was also intrigued by Silva-Ferrer\u2019s argument that behind the symbolic rupture represented by Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s election, there were initially few changes in the operational field. Transformations were much faster and deeper in the discursive and symbolic realm than in the practical or institutional. Silva-Ferrer writes of a disjuncture between revolutionary discourse and revolutionary praxis, of the narration of a revolutionary epic. This was all rather similar to my analysis of El Sistema \u2013 that its claim to be a social rather than musical program was founded more in rhetoric than realities. It appears from Silva-Ferrer\u2019s account that across Venezuelan institutions more widely, embracing a new language was more important than embracing change itself. It is worth considering the idea that El Sistema\u2019s rise to global fame has occurred during a period in which, according to this Venezuelan author, grandiose claims with dubious foundations have been the norm in the national context.<\/p>\n
One of the book\u2019s core arguments, which informs its title, is that the cultural sphere has increasingly become a site of disciplinary control on the part of the state. Discipline is also a central concern of my own book. El Sistema might thus be seen as a disciplinary institution within a broader disciplinary cultural program \u2013 which may explain the government\u2019s support for an organization that has historically been quite opposed to its stated cultural priorities, such as valorization of the national, popular, indigenous, and Afro-descendent.<\/p>\n
However, Silva-Ferrer sees the broader program as one of imposing 21st<\/sup>-century socialism, whereas I argue that El Sistema has nothing to do with key priorities of Chavism such as \u201cparticipatory and protagonistic democracy,\u201d either explicitly or implicitly. Does Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s support for El Sistema, despite his dislike of Abreu and classical music, suggest that in practice he placed a higher priority on disciplined subjects than participatory citizens? Did he recognize in El Sistema the potential of arts education as a tool of government and technique of social control? Or is it simply that he was attracted to El Sistema as a valuable public relations tool and failed to understand that in practice it contradicted his drive for participatory democracy?<\/p>\nFinally, I was struck by Silva-Ferrer\u2019s section on education, and in particular his claim that the dropout rate in Venezuelan secondary schools is very high. The figures for school starters<\/em> are very good, but many (especially the poorest) fall by the wayside. 45% have dropped out or are repeating a year by the end of 9th<\/sup> grade, and only 18% of students finish the full cycle of primary and secondary school. Given the frequent claims that El Sistema insists on respectable school performance by its students, if so many children are dropping out of school, is the program really getting through in a significant way to the most disadvantaged in society? Or does it mirror the exclusions of the wider education system, revolving primarily around students who stay in school, who are generally from more advantaged or stable backgrounds?<\/p>\nTaking these points together raises some interesting questions about attempts to establish Sistema-inspired programs overseas. As I argue in my book, to look for El Sistema\u2019s secret in elements like pedagogy and curriculum is to head down a dead end; its approach is generally old-fashioned and conservative. What really makes the program tick, to extrapolate from Silva-Ferrer\u2019s evidence, is the combination of authoritarian management \u2013 having a \u201ccultural caudillo\u201d in charge \u2013 and privileged access to petro-dollars. (Interestingly, Richard Hackman concluded that these same two factors \u2013 authoritarian leadership and lavish funding \u2013 were the keys to the performance quality of orchestras, as I discuss in my book.) In other words, El Sistema is highly specific to Venezuela\u2019s magical state, with its love of spectacle and magician-conductors, and its almost unlimited funds to back favoured projects. El Sistema is not only an institution made in Abreu\u2019s image \u2013 like \u201ca suit made to measure,\u201d in the words of a former close associate \u2013 but one that is profoundly tied to Venezuela and the \u201cblack gold\u201d that lies beneath it. It is therefore, surely, the opposite of a generalizable blueprint or paradigm for music education around the globe.<\/p>\n