Photos: Bolivian orchestra helps provincial youth play for the future

In Bolivia's biggest coca-producing area, the Chulumani Youth Symphony Orchestra has helped teens with an escape from the hardships of everyday life. Instead of the province’s young falling prey to the usual pitfalls of drug and alcohol abuse, being saddled by violence or family drama, the orchestra is bringing them the discipline of classical music, helping forge lasting friendships and giving space to dreams of a future career in the arts and hope to turn their love of music into a lifelong occupation.

Updated on: Dec 10, 2018 12:17 PM IST

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Coca grower Mariel Chura, 21, plays the viola during a break from harvesting coca leaves in her lot in Chura, Chulumani province, Bolivia. When she joined a youth orchestra aged 14, Chura did not even know what a viola was. Seven years later, she loves the instrument, which has offered her an escape from the hardships of life in Bolivia’s biggest coca-producing area. (Aizar Raldes / AFP)

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Chura grew up picking coca leaves on her parents’ land. When she received visitors on a suffocatingly hot and humid day, she took out her instrument and filled the family home with music, as her mother Lidia turned the pages of sheet music. “I feel calm (playing the viola). It’s like you forget everything -- you’re focused on playing, you forget your problems,” Chura said. (Aizar Raldes / AFP)

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The Chulumani Youth Symphony Orchestra has helped teens avoid the usual pitfalls plaguing the region: drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and family drama. Instead, they learn the discipline of classical music, forge lasting friendships and work on a career in the arts. “The orchestra has become like a sanctuary, where kids come and feel like they’re free from those problems” that usually mark adolescence, Castro said. (Aizar Raldes / AFP)

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Chura was picked on by classmates. The boys in the group were the targets of homophobic slurs for playing in the orchestra. At age 18, Chura used her income from the fields to buy her own her viola for $115 --a significant amount of money for her. She is now studying engineering and on weekends goes home to teach viola to two little boys and continue rehearsing with fellow orchestra members. (Aizar Raldes / AFP)

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Like other Bolivian kids, these young musicians “have a lot of social problems (around them). These days, it’s not just drugs and alcohol; instead, there’s violence, the issue of family abandonment, lack of affection,” said Castro, who has become a role model for his students. “We’ve been a kind of prevention program” against drug and alcohol use by default, he added. (Aizar Raldes / AFP)

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The Chulumani Symphony has begun to collaborate with other Bolivian orchestras, as well as ones in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay. In November, the town hosted an “International Youth Summit for Music and Life,” where young people from the four countries put on a concert for over 1,000 spectators. “When music comes into your life, it changes you,” said 19-year-old violinist Lourdes Sarabia during a break. (Aizar Raldes / AFP)

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A fan of German Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann -- but also Vivaldi, Mozart and Bach -- Chura dreams of playing in a symphony orchestra like Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. She is not alone --many of the 80 or so children and young adults in the Chulumani Symphony hope their love of music can turn into a lifelong occupation. (Aizar Raldes / AFP)