Tunes from trash — Paraguayan orchestra stages London show

Published January 28, 2025
MEMBERS of Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra of Cateura pose for a photograph before performing for an audience inside London’s Lancaster House.—AFP
MEMBERS of Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra of Cateura pose for a photograph before performing for an audience inside London’s Lancaster House.—AFP

LONDON: Just two years ago, Lucas Cantero knew nothing about playing music.

On Sunday evening, the 16-year-old Paraguayan played his drum — made from discarded pallet wood, X-ray panels and copper rods — in the opulent setting of London’s Lancaster House.

“I would never have imagined that music could come from bits of wood and old X-rays”, admitted the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura member. The young and highly unorthodox ensemble takes its name from the biggest landfill site in the Paraguayan capital Asuncion. Comprised of local residents from disadvantaged backgrounds, they make their instruments from unwanted paint cans, plumbing pipes, oil drums, shoe brushes and an array of other waste. They have forged everything from violins to trumpets.

Around 10 members from the 60-strong group were in London, where they dazzled 200 guests — diplomats, parliamentarians and business owners — in the 19th century mansion managed by Britain’s Foreign Office, near Buckingham Palace. Their repertoire ranges from Mozart to Coldplay, via the Beatles and Frank Sinatra.

The ensemble launched in 2007 and has now played in around 50 countries. “In these 18 years we have managed to set up a music school and create an orchestra with these recycled instruments that has attracted the attention of the whole world,” its director Favio Chavez, 49, said.

“Not only because of how unusual the instruments are, but also because of the talent and skill that these young people and children have in transforming the rubbish into music.”

Chavez came up with the idea for the project nearly two decades ago when he arrived as a technician at the Cateura landfill site. “I’m also a musician and I spontaneously started teaching music to the children” living around the landfill, he explained.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2025

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