El Sistema, "The Venezuelan Musical Miracle": The

Construction of a Global Myth

Geoffrey Baker

Latin American Music Review, Volume 39, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2018, pp.
160-193 (Article)

Published by University of Texas Press

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 GEOFFREY BAKER

El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle”:

The Construction of a Global Myth

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

The Venezuelan orchestral training program El Sistema represents a paradox.

A B S T R AC T:
It may be the most famous and lauded music education system in the world, yet scholarly ex-
amination in recent years has revealed numerous flaws in the dominant narrative, which ap-
pears increasingly like a myth. This article examines the processes by which this narrative
was established both nationally and internationally, focusing on the creation, dissemination,
and consolidation of the myth by the media, program evaluations, and an emerging global El
Sistema industry.

■ ■ ■

keywords: El Sistema, myth, media, evaluations

R E S U M E N : El programa orquestal venezolano El Sistema representa una paradoja. Podría

ser el sistema de educación musical más famoso y elogiado del mundo, sin embargo la investi-
gación académica en los últimos años ha revelado numerosas fallas en la narrativa dominante,
que aparece cada vez más como un mito. Este artículo examina los procesos por los cuales
se estableció esta narrativa a nivel tanto nacional como internacional, centrándose en la crea-
ción, diseminación y consolidación del mito por los medios, las evaluaciones de programas, y
una industria global emergente de El Sistema.

■ ■ ■

palabras clave: El Sistema, mito, medios, evaluaciones

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

The Venezuelan National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras,

better known as El Sistema, has become globally renowned since 2007,
and a powerful and eulogistic narrative has evolved around this scheme.
Founded in 1975 and often labeled “the Venezuelan musical miracle,” it
has been hailed around the world as a social project that has rescued hun-
dreds of thousands of children from poverty and a life of crime, turn-
ing slum dwellers into world-class classical musicians. Its founder, José
­Antonio Abreu, explained his vision in a television interview: “El Sistema
breaks the vicious cycle [of poverty] because a child with a violin starts to
become spiritually rich: . . . when he has three years of musical education
Latin American Music Review, Volume 39, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2018
© 2018 by the University of Texas Press
DOI: 10.7560/LAMR39202
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 161

behind him, he is playing Mozart, Haydn, he watches an opera: this child

no longer accepts his poverty, he aspires to leave it behind and ends up de-
feating it” (Argimiro Gutiérrez 2010).
This story has been elaborated and disseminated by journalists (e.g.,
Borzacchini 2010), arts writer-advocates (e.g., Booth 2008, 2010; ­Tunstall
2012; Tunstall and Booth 2016), documentary makers, and major fig-
ures in the classical music world. Simon Rattle described El Sistema as
“the most important thing happening in music anywhere in the world”
(Schoenbaum 2012), and other high-profile advocates have included
­Claudio Abbado and Plácido Domingo. It has cemented a reputation as a
highly successful example of socially oriented music education, and it has
spawned an array of “El Sistema–inspired” (ESI) programs in around sixty
countries. Abreu won a string of major international awards and honorary
doctorates, and was proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.
Yet there are other, less widely known sides to the dominant narra-
tive expounded by the program, its supporters, and the media. First of all,
there is no robust, independent study to support it. A 1997 external eval-
uation for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which was con-
sidering whether to make a loan to the program, revealed a number of
systemic problems and some strikingly disillusioned musicians (see Baker
and Frega 2018). Nevertheless, the bank went ahead with the loan. In 2011,
the bank decided to carry out an experimental study of the program. This
study (Alemán et al. 2016) found little evidence to support El Sistema’s the-
ory of change or Abreu’s claim. It also pointed to a high dropout rate and a
failure to target the poor effectively—striking problems in what had long
been billed as a shining example of social inclusion and poverty reduction.
These findings were not a surprise to everyone, however, since by this
point scholars had begun to question the official narrative. When the inter-
national El Sistema boom began in 2007, after the Proms debut of its elite
ensemble, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra (SBYO), there was very lit-
tle research on the program. This has since changed. Scrutiny of ESI pro-
grams began in 2010, focusing particularly on Sistema Scotland (­A llan
et al. 2010; Borchert 2012). The flow of studies increased from 2014, and
more attention began to be paid to the Venezuelan progenitor, resulting in
a monograph (Baker 2014), two journal special issues (Action, Criticism,
& Theory for Music Education 15, no. 1 [2016], and Revista ­Internacional de
­Educación Musical 4 [2016]), and a number of other critical studies (e.g.,
Rimmer, Street, and Phillips 2014; Logan 2015a, 2015b; Pedroza 2015;
Scripp 2015; Shieh 2015; Baker 2016a; Baker and Frega 2016).
Critical academic study of El Sistema is thus flourishing. Scholars
have analyzed both the practices of El Sistema and its international off-
shoots (e.g., Baker 2014; Dobson 2016) and the philosophy that underpins
them (e.g., Baker 2016b; Bull 2016; Logan 2016). They have focused on the
 162 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

­ roblematic theories of poverty on which the program is based (Scruggs

p
2015; Bates 2016), its alignment with neoliberalism and neo­colonialism
(Logan 2015a; Rosabal-Coto 2016), and the various ways in which it “seems
like an unwelcome—and unpromising—visit from the ghost of pub-
lic-school orchestra rooms past” (Fink 2016, 34). The voices of disgrun-
tled former participants have started to emerge (Scripp 2015; Baker and
Frega 2018). Other recent scholarship within music education, too, such as
The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education (Benedict et al.
2015), shows El Sistema in a problematic light: its practices and philos-
ophy closely mirror ones that have been criticized by progressive music
educationalists.
El Sistema has thus become a major paradox in the world of music ed-
ucation, and indeed classical music more widely. On the one hand, it may
be the most famous and lauded music education system in the world, and
it has been credited as the primary and most successful example of “social
action through music” (one of its slogans). On the other hand, closer ex-
amination in the last few years has suggested that this dominant narrative
is significantly overblown. The Venezuelan musicologist Ludim ­Pedroza
(2015, 71) critiqued the burnishing of El Sistema’s story into an “epic his-
tory” based on “the rise of a hero,” while the US musicologist ­Robert
Fink labeled the program as “perhaps the single greatest classical music
myth of our time.”1 In an official statement on Facebook on May 5, 2017,
the renowned Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero criticized “social ac-
tion through music” as an “endlessly repeated, media-friendly, promoter-
friendly, agent-friendly mantra” that was an illusion in the Venezuelan
context. The Venezuelan journalist Ibsen Martínez (2017a, 2017b) wrote a
pair of critical articles in El País, describing the program as an “ongoing
rip-off” and a “vast populist swindle.”
The discrepancy between the official narrative of El Sistema and more
skeptical perspectives is now well established. The focus of this article
therefore includes related questions: How did such a debatable narrative
grow to such proportions and take such firm hold over the public imagi-
nation around the world? How, in short, was the global myth of El Sistema
constructed?
I build on Pedroza’s (2015) critical study of El Sistema’s historiography,
which also focuses on myth. Pedroza’s article is focused primarily on El
Sistema’s prehistory (up to 1975), on archival sources and secondary liter-
ature on orchestral music in Venezuela prior to this date, and thus on the
national and historical context. As a music historian, she questions the
program’s claims of innovation by revealing its continuities with the past.
I concentrate on a more recent period (1989 to the present), drawing on
media articles, program evaluations, and interviews with journalists and
musicians, and adopt a more global and contemporary frame. My prime
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 163

interest is the growth and dissemination of the Sistema myth in recent

times, and my approach is more ethnomusicological.2
My use of the word myth reflects its everyday senses, described by the
online Oxford Dictionary website as “an exaggerated or idealized concep-
tion of a person or thing” and “a widely held but false belief or idea.” This
is because my primary aim is a somewhat quotidian one: to gather evi-
dence on the construction of the dominant Sistema narrative. Although
more theoretical analysis of myth would be a valuable exercise, it is one
that plays only a secondary role here. I believe that the immediacy of the is-
sue—the rapid growth of El Sistema into a global movement on the back
of idealized conceptions and false beliefs—justifies an immediacy of ap-
proach and style that would be compromised by greater focus on theoreti-
cal elaboration.
The evidence includes some material from previous publications, but
the argument on which it is brought to bear is novel. Furthermore, it is
important that evidence and arguments that have appeared previously in
social media be presented within the realm of peer-reviewed scholarship.
One of the main concerns underpinning this article is that Sistema advo-
cates and the media have had considerable (and rarely beneficial) influence
on writing about El Sistema within academic music studies; they have
propagated idealized views of the program, and some scholars, rather than
exercising due skepticism, have picked up the baton, helping to cement
those visions as orthodoxy. This influence needs to be countered within
the scholarly field. Expositions in social media rarely become an essential
reference point for scholarly studies, particularly those from disciplines
other than music; academic publication is therefore necessary if the his-
toriography of El Sistema is to be revised. In sum, this article is intended
to offer a more rigorous, research-based alternative to advocacy and me-
dia accounts of El Sistema, while complementing Pedroza’s work in pro-
viding a more solid historical foundation for future scholarly writing on
the program.

Creating the Myth

Studying the first phase of the construction of the Sistema myth is not
an easy task. Researchers are faced with a notable shortage of sources on
which to draw. Nevertheless, documentary and ethnographic research
point to a fundamental mechanism by which the narrative of El Sistema
began to take on a mythical quality: the media. Yet it is also the media that
allow brief glimpses of this mechanism at work.
The period from 1989 to 1994 appears to have been crucial. This is when
El Sistema’s founder and director, José Antonio Abreu, was also m ­ inister of
culture and president of the National Council for Culture (CONAC). This
 164 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

triple employment placed Abreu in a powerful position with respect to the

media, and several journalists have claimed that he made the most of this
opportunity.
In a pioneering investigative article, Roger Santodomingo (1990)
claimed to have seen checks and contracts that revealed that Abreu hired
consultants and journalists as part of a media campaign to polish CONAC’s
image. The reams of uniformly positive press at the time suggested that
this policy was working well. Santodomingo’s principal source, Joaquín
López Mujica, a member of CONAC’s consultative council, claimed that
Abreu had approximately forty journalists among his consultants and as-
serted: “Abreu’s management has been characterized by covert control of
information. It’s what could be termed a totalitarianism of cultural infor-
mation” (19). Santodomingo concluded, “Abreu loves the press” (21). His
article was accompanied by a cartoon of Abreu conducting the media.
At the heart of Santodomingo’s critique is Abreu’s fixation, according
to López Mujica, with display. López Mujica states baldly that “culture for
Abreu is spectacle” and “the priority is the show” (20). He also claims that
there were many “phantom institutes or programs that have never been
launched” (21). The sense of a pervasive gap between image and reality at
this time extends specifically to El Sistema. López Mujica alleges that huge
amounts were spent on foreign tours, yet most provincial núcleos (music
schools) were far from impressive. Tellingly, he describes El Sistema as “an
illusion” (21). By 1990, then, it appears that a divergence between reality
and public projection was already under way, facilitated by Abreu’s power
over a largely compliant media.
Further revealing critiques may be found toward the end of Abreu’s ten-
ure as minister and director of CONAC. In an article entitled “The Hu-
miliated of CONAC,” Earle Herrera (1994) mocks the neoliberal language
of CONAC’s managers and the paid hacks who sing their praises, claim-
ing that “the current leadership of CONAC owes much of its ‘shine’ to
these shameful and pricey pens.” He describes a starkly divided cultural
world, in which those at the top enjoy “overseas trips, self-publication of
books, the traffic of influence, legions of flatterers, fine food and fine wine,
self-promotion and carte blanche in the press.” Oscar Ramos’s critique be-
gins with the uncannily and uniformly positive coverage of Abreu.3 “Do
you recall any criticism of the cultural policy of Pérez-Abreu appearing
at any point in the press?”4 He mocks Chefi Borzacchini, Abreu’s lead-
ing supporter and head of the culture section at El Nacional newspaper,
for painting the minister as a hero “in language that recalls the odes of
Gómez” (Venezuela’s early twentieth-century dictator).5 Both Ramos and
­Herrera, then, like Santodomingo before them, point the finger at their
fellow ­journalists for exaggerating the achievements of Abreu and the in-
stitutions that he headed.
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 165

F I G U R E [Link] of José Antonio Abreu that accompanied Roger Santodomingo’s

1990 article “CONAC: Tocata y fuga.” Illustration by Hugo Ramallo.

Another major investigative article about Abreu was published by ­Rafael

Rivero (1994). Among various disturbing claims about “The Philanthropic
Ogre,” as he dubs El Sistema’s founder, Rivero highlights Abreu’s media
fixation.6 The former head of publicity at CONAC describes Abreu as “ob-
sessed as far as the media are concerned . . . more than capable of calling
me at 3 am about a small detail of an information leaflet” (48). Rivero de-
scribes Abreu’s abhorrence of a publicity vacuum—somewhat typical in
politicians—and also points to its darker side: He claims that El ­Nacional
critic Enrique Moya’s negative report of an Abreu-sponsored event saw
the author given his marching orders, and alludes to a practice of cultural
institutions defanging journalistic reports. An attempt at revolution by
a group of journalists, fed up with constant interference, fizzled out af-
ter a number of signatories to a mordant open letter mysteriously with-
drew their support; coincidentally, almost all of them were subsequently
given jobs as cultural advisers to CONAC. According to Rivero, Abreu’s
microcontrol of the media extended into the provinces, where journalists
who published critical opinions in local newspapers were instantly repri-
manded or their employers urged to take punitive action.
Like Santodomingo four years earlier, Rivero paints a portrait of a cul-
tural sphere, presided over by Abreu, in which there were significant gaps
 166 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

between plans and practices and in which appearances were all-important.

According to Rivero, “It is no secret that in this most recent period every-
one travelled [overseas], or received money for X project which, in many
cases, was never carried out” (53). Rivero signs off with the opinions of two
cultural observers who claim that “for Abreu, culture is a fashion show, a
swindle,” and that “under Abreu there has been no culture, just a lavish
and self-congratulatory spectacle” (53).
There are several reasons to take this counternarrative seriously as an
account of Abreu’s relationship with the media. It was produced indepen-
dently by four journalists over a period of several years; the authors were
writing about their own professional milieu; they cited or referenced other
journalists by name; and Santodomingo both quoted a CONAC insider
and claimed to have seen documentary evidence. Additionally, my own in-
terviews with journalists have provided further corroboration.
Key elements of the construction of the Sistema myth are thus evident
between 1989 and 1994: a cultural and political leader with a strong incli-
nation toward spectacle, gaps between representation and reality and be-
tween what was promised and what was executed, and a largely compliant
media that was kept in line by both the carrot and the stick. This capac-
ity to control messages and generate glowingly positive accounts was to
become particularly important in the mid-1990s, when El Sistema under­
went a major—if never officially acknowledged—discursive makeover,
changing its identity from a musical to a social program.
In a lengthy interview in 1978, Abreu stated that his aim for the Na-
tional Youth Orchestra was “a total transformation of the art of music in
the country, opening up a path for a whole generation of young Venezue-
lan musicians” (“José Antonio Abreu” 2017). El Sistema’s first constitution,
produced the following year, stated that the program’s “objective will be
to contribute to the training of human resources and the financing, direc-
tion, and evaluation of the process of training human resources that may
be required in order to carry out the programs and activities developed by
the Venezuelan National Youth Orchestra.” There was no mention of so-
cial objectives in either source. However, around two decades after the cre-
ation of the first orchestra, this was all to change.
El Sistema’s leaders and official sources have been somewhat coy about
this shift, meaning that details are scarce and awareness limited. How-
ever, in 2017 El Sistema’s executive director, Eduardo Méndez, implied
that the framing of the program in terms of rescuing, protecting, and
transforming young people was linked to its transferal to the Ministry of
­Family, Health, and Sport in 1994 (Carabetta, Rincón, and Serrati 2017).
This was the same year that Abreu left CONAC and relinquished control
of its budget, which had supported his orchestral project. Furthermore,
funding for the cultural sector was under pressure at this time due to low
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 167

oil prices, and populism was on the rise in the political arena. It therefore
seems likely that El Sistema’s mid-1990s discursive “social turn” was a tac-
tical response to economic and political developments in Venezuela and
part of a strategy to seek new sources of funding, though this period also
saw the consolidation of economic and social justifications for cultural ex-
penditure around the world (­Belfiore 2002; Yúdice 2003). Documentary
evidence reveals that the discursive transformation was well established by
1996 (Baker and Frega 2018), although it was incomplete: it left no mark
on El Sistema’s reformed constitution, dated October 15, 1996, which still
described the program’s main objective in musical terms (Baker 2014).
The adoption of the new social rhetoric appears to have occurred rela-
tively quickly and without a comparable shift in practice (Baker and Frega
2018), and interviews suggest that it left some participants bemused.
Scripp (2015, 38) recounts the experience of ex-Sistema violinist Luigi
Mazzocchi: “Due to the sudden emphasis on social outcomes in Abreu’s
speeches and other publicity surrounding the program, members of the
orchestras realized that their program had been reframed as a form of so-
cial action designed to benefit the poorest segment of Venezuelan youth.
For Mazzocchi, the reality of his experience did not match the new rheto-
ric.” The violinist alleged a deliberate fostering of the new myth by the pro-
gram: As Scripp notes, “Orchestra members were explicitly asked not to
contradict, or even discuss, these issues with others outside of El Sistema.”
Mazzocchi claimed:

The person presenting our concert said, “This is unbelievable! This or-
chestra is made up of all poor kids from the poorest neighborhoods of
Venezuela. And now they’re here on our stage performing great music.
What a great achievement.” But I knew for sure—because I knew some
of those kids—that they were not from poor neighborhoods. . . . [S]ome
of them actually hated it being presented like that or being told by peo-
ple, “Whoa, you were from a poor neighborhood and now you’re here
and you’re a great musician!” And . . . we hated it too, but we were told
not to say anything: “just smile, don’t respond.”

Scripp concludes: “Mazzocchi views El Sistema’s claims of social im-

pact on disadvantaged students as unsubstantiated assertions and insin-
cere propaganda emanating from a secretive organization seeking more
­funding” (39).
The picture that emerges from the crucial period of the mid-1990s,
then, suggests a strategic and somewhat sudden construction of a story
of El Sistema as a social program aimed at the most vulnerable groups in
society. If the previous period had seen image management of a less re-
markable kind—essentially the burnishing of El Sistema’s aura by Abreu
 168 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

and a submissive media—the second phase saw a more fundamental di-

vergence between the original motivations of the scheme (clearly stated as
to train and provide opportunities for young orchestral musicians) and its
new official narrative, constructed some two decades later, as a program to
rescue disadvantaged children. At that point, it seems, consolidation and
growth required a stronger narrative to appeal to politicians and multi­
national institutions like the IDB—an instrumental social narrative, rather
than one focused on developing the Venezuelan classical music scene. The
installation of this new mythical narrative was made possible by the politi-
cal power of Abreu, an archetypal “cultural caudillo” (Rodríguez Legendre
1998; Silva-Ferrer 2014), and his control over both El Sistema’s partici-
pants and the press. Indeed, such was this control that the change of iden-
tity went largely unnoticed outside the program and unanalyzed to this
day. The result is that in terms of media representations and public under-
standing, particularly internationally, El Sistema simply is, and always has
been, a social program.
In our interview, the Venezuelan journalist Ibsen Martínez confirmed
the close relationship between the newspaper El Nacional and the cultural
sector (in particular Abreu) during this period. However, he argued that
mythification was not solely a top-down process, but also depended on a
willingness on the part of the Venezuelan general public to revere cultural
leaders such as Abreu or Sofía Imber, founder of the Contemporary Art
Museum of Caracas. In this context, a skilled fund-raiser such as Abreu
quickly becomes converted into “a great captain” or “a great oracle.” As
Martínez noted: “There is a tendency in my society to attribute demi­urgic
powers to these cultural caudillos.” As funds begin to flow into the rele-
vant cultural sector, “society steps back and stops asking questions. That
willingness of wider society to place someone on an indisputable pedes-
tal is in my view a legacy of the colonial period.” This analysis thus views
the mythification of Abreu and his program as rooted in long-standing dy-
namics of Venezuelan society and cultural leadership rather than a shrewd
media operation alone.
Nevertheless, the role of the media in this key period seems clear, and
there continues to be very little probing or questioning of El Sistema by
the mainstream media in Venezuela, which generally provides publicity
for the program. Abreu’s critics have pointed repeatedly to his network
of political and media contacts and the consequent difficulty in publish-
ing critiques of his project, resulting in wide and almost universally glow-
ing press coverage. The writer Eduardo Casanova (2009) alleged that “if
someone does an audit they will find the names of several cultural journal-
ists from high circulation newspapers who were and are on Abreu’s pay-
roll.” In our interviews, others stated that less than positive coverage was
not tolerated. A prominent music educator recalled Abreu’s “brutal” and
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 169

“ugly” reaction to a negative article by the music critic Gustavo Tambascio

in 1979, an episode reported by Rivero (1994), and he claimed that from
that moment on, music critics started to be more careful: “No one says
anything in the press—just positive things.”7 Nevertheless, Javier Sansón
published a satirical piece about El Sistema on February 15, 2005, in his
column “Música de solfa” in El Universal; he was suspended shortly af-
terward. In another interview, a music journalist reported that when he
applied for a job with El Nacional, a member of the paper’s culture team
“told me very clearly and upfront that if I were to become a music critic for
El Nacional I would never, ever be able to say anything negative about El
Sistema, not even in passing.”

Disseminating the Myth

One of the most important moments in the history of El Sistema was the
Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra’s debut at the Proms in London in 2007.
This concert was a prime catalyst for the emergence of El Sistema as a
global phenomenon. During the lead-up to the Proms, the first major
newspaper articles about El Sistema appeared in the United Kingdom, ini-
tiating a wave of media interest in the Global North that has barely abated
to this day. This wave constitutes the next phase in the story: the interna-
tional dissemination of the Sistema myth. Taking two of these early press
articles and one later one as case studies, we may see how foreign journal-
ists were co-opted as overseas standard-bearers of the official narrative.
Charlotte Higgins (2006) and Ed Vulliamy (2007) both traveled to Ca-
racas, and they present very similar portraits of El Sistema. Both visited
a “show” Sistema center and one or two schools in poor neighborhoods.
Both interviewed Abreu, Gustavo Dudamel, and Rafael Elster (director of
Sarria núcleo). In both cases, Abreu described social concerns as central
to his vision from the start, and both took his words at face value. H
­ iggins
characterized El Sistema as a “radical social project,” while V ­ ulliamy
claimed that the musicians of the SBYO “come for the most part from des-
perate shantytowns.”
What these journalists failed to do, like most others who subsequently
visited Caracas and wrote about El Sistema, was to corroborate this story.
They did not delve beneath the surface, find sources willing to tell other
versions of the story, or ascertain that most of the SBYO’s musicians
did not, in fact, come from “desperate shantytowns” but were ordinary
­middle- and lower-middle-class young people.8 Admittedly, this would not
have been easy. They were faced with a shrewd, well-prepared, and well-
funded public relations operation more characteristic of a multinational
corporation than a music education program. El Sistema is renowned for
its orchestrated red-carpet tour. Wakin (2012), writing a few years later,
 170 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

­ escribed “an elaborately choreographed showcase” for visiting foreigners;

d
he perceived El Sistema as “a well-oiled machine when it comes to wel-
coming outsiders,” putting on displays for which children are “rehearsed
to within an inch of their lives.” I, too, have witnessed El Sistema’s im-
pressive reception (Baker 2014). Armstrong (2005, 3) notes that “mythol-
ogy is usually inseparable from ritual,” and Abreu—described as a master
of spectacle by some Venezuelan journalists—has long known how to use
ritualized displays to bolster his mythical narrative.
The British journalists were told an inspiring story—or “epic history,”
as Pedroza puts it—about El Sistema’s goals and achievements. Both writ-
ers spotted clues, and Higgins sensed that the story had been carefully
tailored—“The way Abreu talks about the System is clearly designed to
chime with Chávez-speak”—but they failed to dig deeper and look into
Abreu’s past. As a result, they did not grasp that this program had been
created by a conservative politician and lifelong neoliberal, and, with its
core values of discipline, respect, obedience, and hard work, was far from
“radical.”9 Rather, they were swayed by the storyline and performance that
El Sistema had created for external consumption.
A notable feature of such articles is the extent to which Abreu is per-
mitted to create his own myths without any challenge—something that
has largely continued to this day. Clemency Burton-Hill (2012) reported
that Abreu’s “visionary philosophy has, since 1975, been based on the no-
tion that a free, immersive classical music education for the poorest of the
poor might positively influence the social problems plaguing the country.”
Abreu told her that he began with a conviction of the possibility of social
transformation: “I told those first 11 members of the orchestra that we were
creating the beginning of a network that would eventually turn Vene­zuela
into a musical power by rescuing children from low-income families.” Yet
in the 1978 interview cited earlier, Abreu made no mention of rescuing
children from low-income families; the words poor and social—now central
to his vocabulary—did not appear anywhere. Nor was there any mention of
rescuing children from low-income families in El Sistema’s first constitu-
tion. Furthermore, musicians who had played and worked in El Sistema in
the 1980s and early 1990s told me that they heard nothing about social ob-
jectives at this time and saw no targeting of poor children; Mazzocchi said
the same to Scripp (2015). Abreu’s claim therefore appears to be a deliber-
ately created origin myth, one that involves a considerable degree of histor-
ical revisionism but was accepted without question by journalists.
Burton-Hill goes on: “Abreu’s hypothesis has been overwhelmingly vin-
dicated.” This statement, too, rests on Abreu’s own claims rather than in-
dependent investigation: “‘The Inter-American Development Bank, the
Venezuelan State and the Andean Development Corporation are contin-
ually supervising the foundation’s projects,’ he says, ‘because they have
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 171

i­ nvested so many resources. Wherever there is an impact evaluation study,

the results are unanimous. Children engaged in the programme attain
above-average results in school and show a tremendous capacity for col-
lective community action.’” Yet a major evaluation in the early 2000s,
which had presented its findings to Abreu in person, found that longer-
term Sistema participation had a small negative effect on school atten-
dance and academic achievement. Furthermore, the IDB had both publicly
and privately admitted in 2011—a year before Burton-Hill’s interview with
Abreu—that none of the existing evaluations was reliable (Baker 2014). In
that year, it commissioned a new study that “would be the first rigorous ev-
idence of the results of the program,” admitting that its 2007 cost-benefit
analysis “was the result of various suppositions and not of a rigorous mea-
surement of the impact of El Sistema on the beneficiaries of the program”
(Sistema Nacional 2011, 2–3). The reality was thus quite different from the
story that Abreu presented, yet Burton-Hill simply took Abreu’s word that
the program was a resounding success. Abreu’s hypothesis still has not
been vindicated—indeed, it has been contradicted, as we shall see.
A characteristic feature of these and other important features in major
English-language newspapers is vocabulary that contributes to mythifica-
tion. Words such as visionary, radical, and revolutionary appear frequently.
Yet ensemble education in European music has been widespread in Latin
America since the sixteenth century, and most scholars of music edu-
cation today see little that is revolutionary in a youth orchestra playing
canonic European masterworks. Abreu and his program are in fact distin-
guished by their conservatism and resistance to change (Baker and Frega
2018). Through Pedroza’s (2015) revisionist lens, Abreu appears more as
an executor and manager of other people’s ideas than a creator. He was
also indebted to Jorge Peña Hen, who created a groundbreaking youth or-
chestra project in the Chilean town of La Serena in 1964, eleven years be-
fore El Sistema’s first orchestra. Nevertheless, characterizations of Abreu
tend toward the heroic or otherworldly: Burton-Hill likens him to Mother
Teresa, while other journalists have compared him to Gandhi and Nelson
­Mandela (see Baker 2014).
These articles are representative of the past decade of mainstream me-
dia coverage in the Global North, which has been characterized by an over-
dependence on press releases and special shows for foreign visitors and
an absence of corroborating research. It is hard to find many English-­
language journalists who have asked critical questions of El Sistema, let
alone ones who have done so after visiting Venezuela.10 This is a point
acknowledged even by confirmed Sistema supporters like the Telegraph’s
classical music critic, Ivan Hewett (2014), who wrote in response to my
book: “Baker rightly points the finger at journalists (including myself)
who were too easily seduced by the official narrative.”11 Another classical
 172 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

music journalist, Igor T ­ oronyi-Lalic (2012), accused his colleagues of fail-

ing to ask “even the most basic questions of the enterprise” and delivering
an “unthinking whitewashing of El Sistema.”
This scenario may reflect the difficulties that a story like El Sistema
poses for cultural journalism. Armed with press releases, notes from a
red-carpet tour, and a handful of interviews, newspaper music journalists
were able to write feature-length stories that channeled Abreu’s celebratory
account of El Sistema. Uncovering the more complex and contradictory re-
alities requires a deeper understanding of the Venezuelan context, good
contacts outside the Sistema sphere, and familiarity with the debates tak-
ing place in Spanish in multiple spaces. It is the kind of story that requires
the skills, contacts, and investment of time of an investigative journalist—
but no mainstream media outlet has been willing to devote such resources
to a classical music story, despite the widespread and long-term fascina-
tion with El Sistema. As James Ball (2017) notes, the economic pressures
on journalism in the internet era mean fewer reporters, lower budgets,
and constant efforts to reduce costs, and regurgitating sources is much
more cost-effective than investigating them. The current model of maxi-
mizing clicks does not encourage journalists to spend hours looking into
claims or treating them with caution but rather to simply write them up.
Thus international journalists, like their Venezuelan counterparts, have
tended to repeat and elaborate the Sistema myth, if for different reasons.
Mirroring the national context, the international media has generally
operated more in a publicity role than an investigative one. For example,
at the end of 2016, El País and other members of the Leading European
Newspapers Alliance (LENA) announced that they had signed a deal with
Dudamel to disseminate classical music via the newspapers’ digital plat-
forms (Europa Press 2016). The first activity would be the distribution of
the complete Beethoven symphonies, recorded by Dudamel and the Simón
Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, which would be touring them around Eu-
rope three months later. The article also included publicity for El Sistema
and Dudamel’s Los Angeles project YOLA. This collective of major news-
papers thus agreed to promote the Dudamel brand (and his recording and
tour) rather than investigate the complex story behind it, at a time when
the conductor’s reputation was coming under public pressure in Vene­
zuela due to his close ties to the unpopular government of Nicolás Maduro.
Five days later, Javier Moreno’s (2016) interview in El País treated Dudamel
with kid gloves and omitted contentious information that had been circu-
lating publicly in Venezuela for two months about the intensified politi-
cization of El Sistema—information that undermined Dudamel’s central
statement that he held no political position.12
Although it might be unremarkable that El Sistema should have con-
structed an idealized narrative of itself, more noteworthy is how ­multiple
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 173

parties have collaborated in this process. Alongside the media, writers

and documentary makers have also played a significant part in the inter­
national dissemination of the myth. Most books on El Sistema, for exam-
ple, have expanded on the telling of the program’s story as a social miracle.
­Pedroza (2015) critiques works by María Guinand, Bolivia ­Bottome, and
Chefi Borzacchini, who provided the core Venezuelan accounts and played
an important role alongside journalists in forging an epic history of a musi-
cal miracle.13 She also dissects Tunstall’s (2012) mythification for English-
language readers (see also Pedroza 2014). As she notes, the epic history
originated to a considerable degree with certain founder members of the
National Youth Orchestra and above all Abreu himself, whose stories were
admiringly elaborated by Venezuelan and North American devotees. In
books aimed at a general readership, then, the crucial combination of criti-
cal distance and in-depth research is absent; instead, the authors provide a
platform for the self-mythification of El Sistema’s founding fathers.
Foreign writers, in particular, failed to understand the social focus of
the program as an emergent feature in the mid-1990s and a discursive re-
sponse to political and economic circumstances. Whereas the Venezuelan
journalist Aquiles Esté (2018) correctly identified Abreu’s claims of over-
coming poverty through musical training as a form of “musical populism”
that was carefully and successfully crafted for the “populist ears of Vene-
zuelan presidents” in order to persuade them to fund his project, many
other writers have taken Abreu’s strategic discourse as a literal represen-
tation of reality. Tunstall (2012, x), for example, argues: “From the very be-
ginning, the Sistema has been dedicated to realizing the simple but radical
idea of its founder—that music can save lives, can rescue children, and can
in fact be a potent vehicle for social reform and the fight against the perils
of childhood poverty”—apparently unaware of El Sistema’s original con-
stitution or Abreu’s explanations of his project in the 1970s.
Some scholars and scholarly publishers, too, have contributed to the
construction of the mythical edifice. Tunstall states that her aim was not
just “to tell a compelling tale” of El Sistema but also “to proselytize on
behalf of its mission” (cited in Johnson 2012). It is little surprise, then,
that Washington Post journalist Anne Midgette likened Tunstall’s co­
authored book with Eric Booth to “cult literature,” while Sistema com-
mentator ­Jonathan G ­ ovias (2017) described her writing as resembling “fan
fiction.” Nevertheless, Tunstall’s sole- and coauthored books were pub-
lished by W. W. ­Norton & Company, a prominent house that also publishes
widely used music textbooks in the United States. The result is that her
first book, and the mythical narrative it encapsulates, is regularly refer-
enced as though it were academic research rather than journalism; and
despite its multiple weaknesses, including the lack of a bibliography or
any grounding in scholarship, it forms a cornerstone of undergraduate and
 174 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

graduate dissertations and academic article submissions and publications.

Borzacchini, like Tunstall, is regularly cited by scholars who are apparently
unaware or uninterested that these authors are journalists and Sistema ad-
vocates, not independent and academically qualified researchers.
Maria Majno, a senior figure in both Sistema Italia and Sistema Eu-
rope, wrote an article that depends heavily on institutional publicity ma-
terials, advocacy literature, media reports, and documentary films, yet it
was published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science (2012). It
has now been cited in turn by more than a dozen academic articles (at the
time of writing), in the fields of neuroscience, public mental health, early
child development, and psychology, among others, illustrating how advo-
cacy and media accounts can be transformed into scholarly orthodoxy in a
matter of just a few years. Similarly, the IDB’s 2016 evaluation, which was
the result of a $1 million study and published in an academic journal, cites
advocacy and media materials on El Sistema but not scholarly research.
Thus, whether one looks at the media, books for a general readership, or
even some parts of the academic field, one finds the same problems: a lack
of critical questioning and research, a dependence on unreliable or biased
sources, in some cases an explicit or implicit advocacy motive, and an elab-
oration rather than an examination of the Sistema myth—something that
is of particular concern when it involves published academic research.
Publications on El Sistema are affected by an additional and related
problem: a tendency to ignore peer-reviewed scholarship on the program.
Even some academics are guilty of failing to survey the Sistema literature
properly. This phenomenon might be labeled “cul-de-sac musicology,” a
derivation of the “cul-de-sac epidemiology” described by Michel Odent
(2000). The author argues that some potentially significant research, de-
spite being on topical issues and published in leading scholarly journals, is
neither confirmed nor invalidated by further studies but simply shunned
by other researchers and the media because it is politically incorrect. This
is a fate that has, to a degree, befallen much of the critical literature on El
Sistema, which has been overshadowed by writing that has undergone far
less quality control.
Besides written accounts, the international dissemination of the myth
also rested on advocacy by famous conductors and musicians—Simon
Rattle embraced the epic history with terms like “miracle” and “resur-
rection”—as well as the classical music industry. The rave reviews of the
SBYO’s sold-out Prom in 2007 underlined the orchestra’s commercial po-
tential, and it became a mainstay in major concert halls around the world,
managed by Askonas Holt and recording for Deutsche Grammophon.
The classical music industry, long assailed by concerns over the supposed
“death of classical music” and with its revenues from recordings in decline,
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 175

saw a formula for filling halls, bringing in new audiences, and improving
its image by banishing accusations of elitism. The Sistema myth plays an
essential part in this formula. The (largely fictional) idea that the musi-
cians performing in the world’s great concert halls have been “saved” from
the “slums” is crucial to the marketing backstory that distinguishes the
SBYO from so many other high-class orchestras (including European na-
tional youth orchestras).
The economic value of the myth encouraged further elaboration.
Deutsche Grammophon, for example, generated publicity material that
described Abreu as “universally respected” and stated that 90 percent of
El Sistema’s students came from poverty.14 In reality, as journalistic ar-
ticles and academic studies have revealed (Santodomingo 1990; Rivero
1994; Baker 2014), opinions of Abreu in the Venezuelan cultural sector are
highly polarized, and the best demographic data available puts the poverty
rate at 16.7 percent (Alemán et al. 2016).
The music education sector, too, saw fervent advocacy. Like classical
music, public music education is under pressure in many parts of the
Global North. A music education program that promised both musical
quality and miraculous social benefits in deprived areas was appealing to
both musicians and funders, including local and national governments.
“El Sistema–inspired” (ESI) programs mushroomed in dozens of coun-
tries around the world, and the efficacy of the myth that underpinned
them discouraged closer examination.
Even prominent higher education institutions such as Harvard Univer-
sity, which might have been expected to scrutinize the story or at least
do basic due diligence, have instead jumped on board with honorary doc-
torates and alliances. London University’s Institute of Education awarded
Abreu an honorary doctorate in 2012 on the basis that El Sistema was
proven to have an extraordinary capacity to reduce levels of poverty, illit-
eracy, crime, drug use, and exclusion, even though no reliable evidence or
rigorous research existed to support such a claim. The New England Con-
servatory, too, played a part in the mythmaking, hosting the Abreu F­ ellows
(later Sistema Fellows) program for five years (2010–2015)—a scheme sub-
sequently described to me by former fellows as failing to analyze the Ven-
ezuelan program critically.
Major multinational organizations have offered enthusiastic support,
but again on flimsy grounds. The United Nations Development Pro-
gramme has supported El Sistema on the basis that “it targets impov-
erished young people” (Clarembaux n.d.), despite the fact that it has no
consistent targeting mechanisms (Baker 2014) and reaches relatively few
poor people (Alemán et al. 2016). The UN’s multimillion-dollar contribu-
tions have been intended to help “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger”
 176 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

(UN Development Programme n.d.)—an unlikely outcome for a program

in which poor people are underrepresented, and one that has never been
properly evidenced.
The decade since 2007 has thus seen the myth converted into a global
El Sistema industry that encompasses a major record label, famous concert
venues and series, residencies, festivals, agencies, conservatoires, universi-
ties, symposia, educational programs, famous conductors and musicians,
institutional leaders, self-proclaimed experts, journalists, and intermedi-
aries of all kinds. There are national and international umbrella groups
(Sistema Europe, El Sistema USA, Sistema Africa) and a global advocacy
network (Sistema Global). Building the Sistema brand has brought prof-
its and bolstered careers. Institutions and individuals have boosted their
profile and prestige by associating themselves with the famous “miracle.”
With so many invested in and benefiting from a positive story and thus ad-
vocating for El Sistema, critical scrutiny has unsurprisingly been in short
supply and largely ignored; instead, the myth has simply grown.

Consolidating the Myth

El Sistema managed not just to redefine itself as a social program in the
mid-1990s, but also to cement a narrative in the media and public opinion
that it was a resounding success. Nevertheless, there have also been sev-
eral attempts to evaluate the program and provide support for such claims,
the history and nature of which provide further insight into the construc-
tion of the Sistema myth. Where one might expect evaluations to test the
official narrative of El Sistema and to present robust evidence to support or
contradict it, recent research has demonstrated that they have been marred
by flaws and contradictions, particularly in Venezuela, though also else-
where (Logan 2015b; Baker and Frega 2018; Baker, Bull, and Taylor 2018).
Some evaluations have simply reproduced the myth and thus contributed
to its consolidation.
Attempts to evaluate the Venezuelan program began in 1996, more
than twenty years after its foundation (Baker and Frega 2018). The catalyst
was El Sistema’s efforts to secure funding from the IDB. Four evaluations
were duly produced by external consultants from 1996 to 1997. These ef-
forts were ultimately successful: the IDB provided a phase 1 loan of $8 mil-
lion in 1998 and a phase 2 loan of $150 million in 2008—two of the most
decisive developments in the history of El Sistema.
However, the first two reports, from 1996, were marked not only by eu-
logistic rhetoric but also by a striking lack of critical scrutiny or robust
evidence of the supposed social benefits. Rather than analyzing the of-
ficial narrative, they simply adopted it. It appears that the IDB was not
convinced, hence its decision to hire two more consultants and repeat the
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 177

process the following year. In marked contrast to the first phase, the sec-
ond pair of consultants discovered and documented numerous problems
with the program. Nevertheless, the IDB granted the $8 million loan.
Behind the successful outcome, then, lay flawed evaluations and di-
vided opinions. However, the more thorough and robust 1997 evaluations,
which were not published, left no trace on the dominant narrative of El
Sistema. The problematic 1996 evaluations, meanwhile, became the foun-
dation for El Sistema’s self-presentation as a successful social program:
some elements—and even some precise phrases—have become part of
the program’s official narrative and can be found (without citations) on
its website.15 Privately, this evaluation process revealed numerous weak-
nesses; publicly, it was leveraged to bolster the myth.
A new evaluation was carried out by the Universidad de los Andes
(ULA) in Mérida between 1999 and 2003.16 This quantitative study, too,
reveals flaws (Baker 2014). As Hollinger notes (2006, 41–42), it has “a
number of inherent design weaknesses” and resembles “less a scholarly
endeavor than necessary documentation to advocate for The System.” The
researchers’ conclusions bore a closer resemblance to El Sistema’s official
narrative than to the evidence, and they even adopted the program’s pros-
elytizing tone.
The most influential evaluation was carried out a few years later by José
Cuesta (2011) and used to justify the IDB’s phase 2 loan of $150 million
to El Sistema.17 This evaluation has subsequently been criticized. It pre-
sented evidence of correlation rather than causation; the use of the terms
“treatment” and “control” was misleading; it did not consider preexisting
cognitive or social differences between children; and El Sistema’s leaders
appeared to have played a part in creating it (Baker 2014). Scruggs (2015)
critiqued the financial calculations behind the study’s conclusion, a cost-
benefit ratio of 1:1.68. In fact, by this time the IDB had already distanced it-
self from this report (and all previous evaluations), as noted earlier.
The largest study to date was commissioned in 2011, carried out in
2012–2014, and published in late 2016 (Alemán et al. 2016). The research-
ers created a “theory of change” that hypothesized that “short-term par-
ticipation in orchestras or choruses may foster positive change in four
child functioning domains: self-regulatory skills, behavior, prosocial skills
and connections, and cognitive skills.” To test their theory, they measured
twenty-six primary outcome variables in these four domains. Only two sig-
nificant outcomes were found: “the early-admission group had higher self-
control and fewer behavioral difficulties, based on child reports.” There
were thus no significant outcomes in twenty-four out of twenty-six areas,
and the researchers “did not find any full-sample effects on cognitive skills
. . . or on prosocial skills and connections.” Even the two supposedly signif-
icant outcomes may well have been a result of chance, since they depended
 178 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

on an unusual and generous interpretation of the statistics (Baker, Bull,

and Taylor 2018), while the validity of child self-reports has been ques-
tioned (Crooke and McFerran 2014).
More strikingly, the estimated poverty rate among the El Sistema chil-
dren was 16.7 percent, whereas the rate for the states in which they lived
was 46.5 percent. In other words, the children entering El Sistema in the
experiment were three times less likely to be poor than all six- to four-
teen-year-olds residing in the same states. Consequently, the study “high-
lights the challenges of targeting interventions towards vulnerable groups
of children in the context of a voluntary social program.” Furthermore,
44 percent of students who were offered a place failed to complete two se-
mesters. The study thus found little evidence to support the official narra-
tive (or the theory of change) and two striking statistics that contradicted
it. One interpretation of these findings is that they are consistent with a
program designed to train orchestral musicians. Since the discursive “so-
cial turn” in the 1990s did not have much effect on long-established prac-
tice, it is unsurprising that the social effects detected by the IDB’s research
are rather more modest than the program’s official rhetoric and the re-
searchers’ initial theory of change.
Furthermore, the study did not test some key claims about El Sistema’s
social impact. The proposal for the study stated that its objective was “to
seek to generate rigorous evidence of the social effects of . . . El Sistema, in-
cluding the impacts on school dropout, illegal behaviour, and unplanned
pregnancies” (Sistema Nacional 2011, 3). However, the study itself, pub-
lished five years later, did not even mention any of these issues, let alone
provide any support for the widespread assumption that El Sistema has
been effective in tackling such social problems; indeed, the disappearance
of these topics between the proposal and the report raises significant ques-
tions. It is perhaps relevant here that a meta-analysis of twelve studies of
after-school programs in the United States suggested that such programs
had a small and nonsignificant effect on delinquency (Taheri and Welsh
2016). In sum, the IDB study provided no convincing evidence for Abreu’s
foundational statement that “El Sistema breaks the vicious cycle [of pov-
erty]” or for claims that it has a significant impact on illegal and risky be-
haviors; indeed, the report suggested that El Sistema was failing even to
reach the poor effectively.
Nevertheless, a launch event for the evaluation in Caracas a few
months later presented a very different picture. The IDB research team,
El Sistema leaders, and government representatives were present at the oc-
casion in March 2017, which—according to the headline displayed prom-
inently at the top of El Sistema’s website—“confirmed the positive impact
of El Sistema on children and young people.” The press release for the
event declared that the research team “expressed its satisfaction with the
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 179

­ ossibility of ­confirming the transformative work of the program” (Prensa

p
­FundaMusical Bolívar n.d.). They had concluded, it claimed, that the chil-
dren and young people who entered El Sistema showed improved connec-
tions with school and family, a higher degree of cooperation with their
peers, and greater self-confidence. According to one of the researchers,
Marco Stampire, “[W]e found a decrease in levels of aggression and risk-­
taking . . . and a willingness to take part in collective activities. The positive
effects were also manifested in childhood IQ.” These claims contradicted
the evidence and conclusions provided by the same researchers in their
published article, in which they had written: “We did not find any full-­
sample effects on cognitive skills . . . or on prosocial skills and connections.”
Ferdinando Regalía, head of the IDB’s Social Protection and Health Di-
vision, underlined the importance of showing the results of the study “to
tackle the criticisms of El Sistema’s work and reaffirm the value of social
inclusion via a program of artistic and musical education.” Yet the find-
ings about the poverty and dropout rates did not tackle the criticisms of El
Sistema’s work but rather provided quantitative support for them, as the
same points had been made previously (Baker 2014). Subsequent publica-
tions such as a graphic summarizing the study, released by the IDB, and
a lengthy interview with El Sistema’s executive director, Eduardo M ­ éndez
(Palmitesta 2018), neglected to mention any of the caveats or negative re-
sults and instead gave the findings an entirely positive spin. At a high-­
profile event at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, on
May 16, 2018, El Sistema, the UN, and the IDB referenced the 2016 study
in presenting the program as “a model of social inclusion for the world,”
ignoring the same study’s evidence of exclusion (low poverty rate among
entrants) and its consequent warning about “the challenges of targeting
interventions towards vulnerable groups of children in the context of a vol-
untary social program.” The transformation of awkward research findings
into a triumphant, myth-boosting PR spectacle was complete.
The 2016 report and, above all, its public presentation cap a twenty-year
history of unconvincing efforts to demonstrate the efficacy of El Sistema,
marked by evaluations that lacked methodological rigor and the elision
of problematic findings and differences of opinion. They underline how
flawed evidence and even counterevidence have been subsumed into the
myth of El Sistema, as a result of the power of the institutions involved.
The Caracas and Vienna events in 2017 and 2018 saw El Sistema, the IDB,
the UN, and the Venezuelan government collude in reinforcing the myth-
ical narrative by presenting findings that ranged from the underwhelm-
ing to the distinctly problematic, and bore little relation to the evaluation’s
objective, as though they “confirmed the transformative work of the pro-
gram” and proved El Sistema to be “a model of social inclusion for the
world.” Where one might expect evaluations to constitute and promote
 180 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

critical scrutiny, most participated in the hagiography of the program, and

those that did not were either buried or their negative findings given a pos-
itive spin.

Persistence of the Myth

By 2018, the Sistema myth ought to have waned somewhat. The most ex-
tensive published qualitative (Baker 2014) and quantitative (Alemán et al.
2016) studies produced similar counterevidence, if different conclusions,
and they were supported by many critical scholarly studies that further
questioned the dominant narrative. Twenty years of evaluations had failed
to produce convincing evidence that El Sistema was effective as a social
program. The study of two decades of IDB documents revealed that fail-
ures were more apparent than successes: little of the bank’s original vision
and even fewer of its evaluators’ proposals had been realized (Baker and
Frega 2018).
Additionally, Abreu and particularly Dudamel found themselves under
increasing critical scrutiny in Venezuela given their overt ties to a govern-
ment whose popularity was sinking along with the economy (Baker 2017).
Today, the intensifying national crisis has left El Sistema seriously weak-
ened: its claims to political neutrality are ever harder to sustain (partic-
ularly since the president’s son, Nicolás Maduro Jr., and the head of the
Constituent Assembly, Delcy Rodríguez, were appointed as program di-
rectors); it suffers from a lack of resources; morale and pay among many
employees are low; and many musicians are leaving the country or look-
ing for ways to do so. El Sistema’s top orchestra lost 42 percent of its musi-
cians in just six months (Sánchez 2018). As Esté (2018) wrote, “El Sistema
is exhausted: not only because of the death of Abreu, but also because the
economic and political foundations on which it was created have crum-
bled.” Notably, Esté held Abreu partly responsible for the current crisis in
El Sistema and in Venezuela more widely: “When democracy was at risk
and sought one of its most illustrious sons, it did not find him. He was al-
ready too committed to a delirious populism that has ended up destroy-
ing his country.” His critical position was echoed by Gisela ­Kozak Rovero
(2018): “Abreu allowed the political instrumentalization of El Sistema by
the revolution that has destroyed Venezuela. He could have resisted and
even been removed, but he preferred to keep quiet and stay in charge.” She
concluded that “Abreu needs to be stripped of his cloak of divinity: he was
a genius constructor whose blindness and weakness gravely wounded his
work and its beneficiaries in their own country.”
Nevertheless, the global myth has remained surprisingly resilient. Sev-
eral explanations for this persistence may be advanced. The media con-
tinues to play an important role. The proliferation of press articles on El
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 181

Sistema over the last decade has seen journalists largely drawing on the
readily available official narrative and existing accounts rather than inves-
tigating the story more deeply. Although there have been a few exceptions,
most of the genuine debate about El Sistema has taken place in Venezuelan
social media and online forums such as La Patilla, Aporrea, and ­Noticiero
Digital. The mainstream media has been generally silent and has largely
failed to ask obvious questions about major issues facing the program. The
cracks in the myth have thus been invisible even to many Venezuelans, let
alone English speakers in the Global North.
For example, a political upheaval that erupted within El Sistema in Oc-
tober 2016 was filmed on a mobile phone and circulated on social media
to howls of protest from many quarters. One hundred thousand people
watched the clip after it was posted on the Instagram account of opposi-
tion leader Henrique Capriles on November 8, 2016. Yet the issue was not
raised in the mainstream media. Similarly, no journalist has inquired into
El Sistema’s failure to build seven major regional music centers, for which
it received nine-figure funding from the IDB a decade ago (Baker and
Frega 2018). No journalist has questioned the claims about El Sistema’s
size, which seem puzzling and have never been independently verified
(Baker 2014).18 No journalist has written about the IDB’s 2016 evaluation
and the doubts that it raises about the program’s effectiveness and target-
ing of the poor.19
Nevertheless, for a more complete explanation for the persistence and
continued power of the myth, we need to look further at its production, re-
ception, appropriation, and usefulness. Two lines of inquiry are sketched
out here, one viewing myth negatively and the other more positively.
The former entails regarding myth in this instance as deliberately cul-
tivated ignorance. It may be illuminating to consider Charles Mills’s no-
tion of the “epistemology of ignorance,” defined by Fehr (2008, 103) as
“the study of the creation and persistence of ignorance, or in other words,
the study of how we don’t know things and how ignorance can be system-
atically generated and maintained.” Fehr examines the “procedures and
systems that stop one from acquiring some kinds of knowledge about the
world” (105).
There are various mechanisms to construct and sustain ignorance
about El Sistema. The public presentation of the 2016 evaluation’s re-
sults by the IDB, the UN, the Venezuelan government, and El Sistema is
a case in point. The international ESI sphere provides further examples.
El Sistema USA, for example, describes itself on its website as “a conver-
sation” and “an on-going inquiry,” yet in reality both are circumscribed
because critical positions are excluded. Unlike academic conferences and
publications on El Sistema, the ESI equivalents do not issue open calls for
papers or allow space for opposing ideas. Academics are only invited if
 182 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

their research is Sistema friendly. Advocacy publications such as Tunstall

and Booth’s (2016) book and their US and international newsletters (En-
semble and World Ensemble) make no mention of recent research unless it
supports their views (which rules out much Sistema scholarship and in-
deed most research on music education and social justice more broadly).
Some influential quarters of the media—particularly those responsible
for disseminating the myth internationally—have contributed to the con-
struction of ignorance by overlooking peer-reviewed academic research or
dismissing it on spurious grounds. The myth’s persistence is thus due in
part to efforts to suppress critical responses to it and shield the general
public from contrary perspectives (see Govias 2015).
More broadly speaking, El Sistema is a powerful institution, and one
that is supported by other powerful institutions. Many organizations and
individuals around the world, having backed El Sistema enthusiastically,
have much to gain from the maintenance of a strong and simple narrative
and much to lose from increased awareness of its disjuncture with reality.
Although critiques have been appearing in numbers, they are largely con-
fined to the academic sphere, whereas the official narrative is promoted
by prominent industry and media figures and indeed entire international
organizations (e.g., Sistema Global, Sistema Europe). There is thus far
more institutional and economic weight behind perpetuating the myth
than interrogating it, ensuring the maintenance of ignorance in the pub-
lic sphere. Research in development studies reveals that “evidence informs
aid policy and practice only when the political context, the networks, and
the knowledge are all in alignment. When the political context is not right,
research is bypassed, evaluations are forgotten, [and] studies are ignored”
(­Ramalingam 2013, 10). Similarly, the Sistema myth persists because coun-
terevidence and counterarguments are politically and economically unac-
ceptable to many influential actors and are thus deliberately marginalized.
Yet such explanations are incomplete; while power, calculation, and
even cynicism may be involved, many people appear to genuinely believe
the myth to be true, and not without reason. Although for most of the his-
tory of Western civilization, music and the arts more generally have been
viewed ambivalently, with both positive and negative traditions going back
nearly 2,500 years, this ambivalence has been almost entirely displaced
by the positive tradition since the 1980s, as the need to argue for arts sub-
sidy in terms of social and economic benefits has increased dramatically
(Belfiore and Bennett 2008). The period since 1990 has thus provided fer-
tile ground for the flourishing of the Sistema myth, and the fact that be-
liefs about the positive social impact of the arts are widespread, deeply
rooted, and socially sanctioned means that they are relatively resistant to
counterevidence.
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 183

Pedroza (2014) makes a more specific argument in relation to the re-

ception of El Sistema in the United States. She identifies a strain of neo-
idealism in admirers and advocates such as Tunstall, who responded
enthusiastically to the echoes of Romantic idealism in Abreu’s discourse
(see also Fink 2016). As Pedroza notes, idealism might be considered a
form of mystification of music; the persistence of the Sistema myth could
thus be seen as resting on its articulation of a major, centuries-old current
of belief about (or mystification of) the relationship of classical music to
society, shared by Abreu and many followers around the world. This would
explain further the imperviousness of Tunstall and others within the clas-
sical music world to the gaps and contradictions in the Sistema story.
It is not a matter of beliefs alone. As Tunstall (2018) wrote in the World
Ensemble after Abreu’s death: “For us, as for many of our readers, the ex-
ample of his life and work has inspired some of our own most important
life choices.” Basing significant decisions on a utopian vision of El Sistema
and its founder only strengthens commitment to the mythical narrative.
To understand Tunstall’s words more fully, it is necessary to recog-
nize the role of Abreu’s personality in fostering the Sistema myth. Rivero
(1994, 52) makes much of Abreu’s powers of persuasion and his “irresist-
ible snake charmer qualities.” Abreu’s success rested on a charisma and
force of personality that convinced many people, in Venezuela and around
the world, to believe in him and his story. The religious overtones of El
Sistema have been noted repeatedly, and Abreu was like a “venerated high
priest” (Wakin 2012), recruiting believers, inspiring faith, and securing
unconditional commitment to his vision of a musical miracle.
Focusing on valued beliefs and consequent practices, rather than restric-
tions on the flow of information, leads to the notion of myth as productive.
Karen Armstrong (2005) argues that myth provides pattern, meaning, and
value in a difficult and chaotic world. Raquel Z. Rivera (2012, 9), drawing
on Robert Segal, coins the term “liberation mythology” and analyzes how
myths can be a tool for “personal and collective liberation from oppres-
sion, injustice, sadness, and/or fear. In other words, the goal of this myth-
making is redemption—individual and collective.” Sara Delamont (2014,
31) notes that “all pilgrims, all seekers, make myths as they go.” The con-
struction and maintenance of myth appears here as fruitful, and at times
a positive choice.
From this perspective, one might argue—and indeed some Sistema ad-
vocates have argued—that it is relatively unimportant whether or not the
Sistema myth is true, so long as it produces positive effects. Given the
growing problems in Venezuela and the consequent deterioration of El
Sistema, such positive effects are most likely to be identified today in the
growth of the global ESI sphere. The celebratory, almost messianic tone of
 184 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

much discourse in this sphere does indeed point to “redemption—individ-

ual and collective.” Some in this field clearly live out Armstrong’s (2005, 3)
contention that mythology “is not about opting out of this world, but about
enabling us to live more intensely within it.”20 The picture presented by
Tunstall and Booth (2016) is one of joy, inspiration, and glowing successes
wherever one looks within the global Sistema movement.
However, in a critical review of this advocacy book, Govias (2017) la-
ments the limited number of trained music educators in the Sistema sec-
tor, in which good intentions have often substituted for good practices. He
portrays some teachers who were ignorant of current social and educa-
tional thinking and painfully ill equipped to deal with disadvantaged chil-
dren. In my research, I have encountered a number of ESI teachers who
echo these criticisms in describing their own field. It cannot be assumed,
then, that enthusiasm or even redemption on the part of advocates and
program leaders equates to positive effects on children and wider society;
indeed, the opposite might be true. The scholarship on ESI programs pre­
sents contrasting views.21
A counterargument to the positive position above would thus be that
some myths, such as medical myths or economic myths peddled by poli-
ticians, are problematic or downright dangerous. Educational myths may
fall somewhere in the middle, but music education scholars recognize
that music education can do harm as well as good (e.g., Bowman 2009),
meaning that propagating myths may potentially have negative conse-
quences. However, weighing up the positive and negative effects of the
Sistema myth on music education and wider society is a topic for another
article.

Conclusion
I have argued that a mythical narrative of El Sistema was generated by
Abreu and the Venezuelan media; disseminated by international journal-
ists and writers, consolidated by problematic evaluations, and supported
by an emerging global Sistema industry that includes a plethora of institu-
tions and organizations that rely on or benefit from the myth. Despite the
lack of supporting evidence, repeated scholarly critiques, and clear focus
on musical rather than social objectives in actual practice,22 the story of
a miraculously successful social program has gained and retained global
currency. With Abreu’s death in March 2018, there was the occasional ca-
veat in a few obituaries—some also mentioned that Abreu’s supposed
PhD in petroleum economics from the University of Pennsylvania was a
myth23 —but most journalists, both Venezuelan and international, com-
peted with one another to produce ever more hagiographic accounts of his
life and utopian visions of his grand project, ever less tethered to research
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 185

or reality. With so much weight behind the myth, it is hard to imagine a

major shift in public understanding taking place.
Nevertheless, I believe that critical examination of the myth is still valu-
able and worth pursuing despite the odds. El Sistema is one of the most
important music education initiatives in the world today, incorporating
hundreds of thousands of students, yet also one of the most poorly under-
stood. As such, illuminating the evolution of its public narrative, and the
ways that this narrative has diverged from the realities of the program, is
a worthwhile endeavor in its own right. There are also further reasons to
critically examine the construction of the Sistema myth.
One is that “power of music” discourses and beliefs have a great hold
over the media and the general public, and stories about classical music
saving the poor in Latin America are particularly popular. There is a whole
field of articles and documentaries about Paraguay’s orchestra of recycled
instruments, Mexico’s music school by a rubbish dump, Brazil’s orchestra-
tion of young people in favelas, and so on. While these projects may indeed
have positive effects, deconstructing the Sistema myth provides a warning
that some aspects may also be idealized or exaggerated and more complex
realities elided from the picture, particularly if the story is told primarily
by advocates and journalists. The case of El Sistema illustrates the impor-
tance of healthy skepticism and rigorous research in relation to appealing
narratives of the power of music to overcome poverty.
The consequences of mythmaking are potentially serious. Hundreds
of millions of dollars have been invested in El Sistema on the assumption
that orchestral training has transformative social powers. The cost of the
program’s new headquarters was originally estimated at $437.5 million in
2010 (CAF 2010)—an extraordinary outlay of development funds on mu-
sic facilities and concert halls, particularly in a country that is suffering
from severe shortages of food, medicines, and basic medical equipment.
The IDB’s 2016 study reveals the flaws in this model and the lack of evi-
dence for its theory of change. Venezuela—the test bed for this theory—
was the richest country in Latin America when El Sistema was founded; it
is now the poorest, and one of the most dangerous places in the world. If
social action is genuinely the goal, then the huge investment in El Sistema
demands serious examination through the lens of opportunity cost.
It takes a considerable degree of wishful thinking to perceive a miracle
in this picture, yet many do, and this has consequences for the wider field
of music education. El Sistema and its many advocates have disseminated
a problematic conception of social action through music around the globe.
Other music programs and cultural fields have developed more realistic
and nuanced ideas about the arts and social development, but the appeal
and high profile of the Sistema miracle story act as a drag on progress in
socially oriented music education.
 186 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

For example, Sistema mythmaking reinforces five-hundred-year-old co-

lonialist narratives of salvation through music that have been problem-
atized by music education scholars (e.g., Gould 2007; Vaugeois 2007).
After the death of Abreu, an image by the well-known Venezuelan cartoon-
ist EDO Ilustrado circulated widely on social media, including Sistema
Global. It is a triptych: the first panel, in black and white, shows a shoe-
less boy holding a gun; the second, in full color, depicts Abreu swooping
down from the skies like an angel, baton/wand in hand, and the boy is
now dressed in an El Sistema uniform and holding a violin; in the third, as
Abreu swoops off again to the heavens, the boy, playing the violin and with
a tear in his eye, utters the words: “Thank you, lifesaver.” It could hardly be
clearer that Abreu, who encouraged this conception of music education, is
heir to the missionaries who spearheaded the cultural conquest of the con-
tinent in the sixteenth century, and thus a problematic figurehead for post-
colonial, multicultural, twenty-first-century Latin America.
Yet the positive reception and international circulation of this image
provides a reminder that the salvation narrative, for all its problems, is cen-
tral to the self-understanding and beliefs of many programs and practi-
tioners in the ESI and similar fields. It is also central to their sales pitch:
simple, strong ideas about music education as salvation are appealing be-
cause they attract the media, donors, and political and public support.
They mark out such programs within the music education field and sup-
port a belief about difference (or even superiority).24
In other words, the bigger the Sistema myth, the better for the ESI field.
Yet this is not the case for music education more widely. The perpetua-
tion and circulation of this myth only makes it harder for Venezuela and
other postcolonial contexts in which the program has been imitated to put
this colonialist conception of music education and its associated practices
behind them.25 Conversely, critiquing the disjuncture between myth and
reality has liberatory potential: it may catalyze exploration and experimen-
tation, rather than the reproduction of existing ideas and methods, and
encourage a search for new models of social action through music that ac-
cord more closely with contemporary research in this field (e.g., Benedict
et al. 2015).
Finally, there are lessons here for scholars in music studies and other
academic fields who are interested in the power of music. Some have been
overly ready to treat partial, superficial, or biased reports as though they
constituted research data. As other academics then cite the first works,
the distorted picture is quickly converted into scholarly orthodoxy. The
Sistema myth has thus been rapidly consolidated via the capillary system
of academia. It is important to disrupt this process by critiquing the myth
within this same system before research in a variety of fields is further
compromised. It is also necessary to foster awareness of the flaws in the
 El Sistema, “The Venezuelan Musical Miracle” ■ 187

production of knowledge about El Sistema in order to raise the bar for fur-
ther contributions to this academic literature. The important task of under-
standing music’s social effects is not advanced by poorly grounded, overly
optimistic scholarship. Ultimately, there is a wide readership around the
world that is interested in El Sistema, and it deserves to be presented with
accurate and rigorously researched writing—something that has been the
exception rather than the norm for much of the program’s history.

Notes
1. ​Endorsement on the back cover of Baker (2014).
2. ​Pedroza’s (2014) earlier study also provides a useful backdrop for this arti-
cle, with its examination of Tunstall’s (2012) book and several documentary films,
although the questions that it addresses (concerning understandings, roles, and
effects of classical music) are quite different from mine.
3. ​Oscar Ramos, “La trilogía.” I was given a photocopy of this article with no
publication details. It seems to date from around 1993–1994.
4. ​Pérez refers to the president at the time, Carlos Andrés Pérez.
5. ​As the author of El Sistema’s official history (2010), Borzacchini has played
an important part in the construction of the Sistema myth.
6. ​For a translation of the article, see the post “The Philanthropic Ogre” on
my El Sistema blog, at [Link] [Link].
7. ​Interviews without references were carried out by the author in Venezuela.
8. ​See the post “‘In El Sistema There Are No Poor People’: Follow-Up to the
IDB Study” on my El Sistema blog.
9. ​In his youth, Abreu formed part of a conservative political group at the
­Universidad Católica Andrés Bello with Pedro Tinoco and Marcel Granier, two
key architects of Venezuelan neoliberalism, and he was a minister and right-hand
man of President Carlos Andrés Pérez during the sharp turn toward neoliberal-
ism beginning in 1989.
10. ​T here have been a few mainstream media critics in the United King-
dom, such as Tom Service (BBC / The Guardian), Richard Morrison (The Times),
­Damian Thompson (The Spectator), and Norman Lebrecht.
11. ​For a response, see the post “Response to Hewett Review” on my El Sistema
blog.
12. ​See the post “The Tightening of the Screw” at my El Sistema blog. Ibsen
Martínez, a columnist for El País, had proposed a critical feature on El Sistema
to the paper shortly before the LENA agreement was announced. His proposal
did not receive a reply, for reasons that were soon to become clear (personal
communication).
13. ​However, Pedroza omits the important detail that all three were employees
and/or close associates of Abreu, which goes a long way toward explaining the na-
ture of their works.
14. ​See the “Insights” section of the entry for Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón
Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Beethoven 5 & 7, on Deutsche G ­ rammophon’s
online catalog: [Link]
 188 ■ GEOFFREY BAKER

15. ​For example, the final sentence of El Sistema’s official vision statement,

located on the program’s website, can be found verbatim in Hernández and
­Urreiztieta (1996, 15).
16. ​The university provided me with a PowerPoint copy. Creech et al. (2013) in-
clude the original reports as Esqueda Torres 2001, 2002, and 2004.
17. ​T he research was used in the 2007 loan report, although it was not pub-
lished until 2011.
18. ​At the time of writing, El Sistema still claimed to be expanding, despite the
severe economic crisis and loss of large numbers of performers, teachers, and ad-
ministrators as part of the mass exodus of Venezuelans from their country.
19. ​Rare exceptions in the one-sided Venezuelan media coverage of El Sistema
include Martínez (2017a, 2017b), Moreno (2017), and Esté (2018).
20. ​However, it is also worth heeding Dobson’s (2016) critique of the gap be-
tween discourse and experience in an ESI program.
21. ​For example, academic studies of the UK ESI field by Allan and collegues
(2010), Borchert (2012), Rimmer, Street, and Phillips (2014), Logan (2015a, 2016),
Bull (2016), and Dobson (2016) present a very different picture to the laudatory
evaluation literature on the same programs.
22. ​At the apex of El Sistema’s pyramid stand classical conductors, high-level
performance ensembles, and opulent concert halls. In contrast, the program has
never developed a distinctive and consistent pedagogical method for social action
through music.
23. ​See the post entitled “Abreu’s Phantom PhD” on my El Sistema blog.
24. ​T his belief has been questioned. See, e.g., Hopkins, Provenzano, and
­Spencer (2017); Govias (2017).
25. ​Nevertheless, criticism of the colonialist conception of music education ex-
emplified by Abreu is gathering steam in Latin America, at least in academic cir-
cles: see, for example, the recent special issue of Revista Internacional de Educación
Musical 5 (2017).

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