Landfill Harmonic: "The Recycled Orchestra" - A Remarkable Story of Music and Reclamation

The Recycled Orchestra

My friend, Rick Mavrovich, just made me aware of this remarkable project.  In a garbage dump in Paraguay, musical instruments are being fashioned from trash and lives are being reclaimed.  The project is described below in the Kickstarter campaign description.

A heartfelt & moving story of how instruments made from recycled trash bring hope to children whose future is otherwise spiritless.

Landfill Harmonic reveals a mind-boggling, inventive effort to change that - musical instruments made from trash. In the barrios of Paraguay, a humble garbage picker uses his ingenuity to craft instruments out of recycled materials - and a youth orchestra is born. Music arises and children find new dreams.

About Landfill Harmonic

A film about “The Recycled Orchestra”, a group of children from a Paraguayan slum who play instruments made entirely of garbage. It is a beautiful story about the transformative power of music, which also highlights two vital issues of our times: poverty and waste pollution.   

The world generates about a billion tons of garbage a year.  Those who live with it and from it are the poor – like the people of Cateura, Paraguay.  And here they are transforming it into beauty.  Landfill Harmonic follows the orchestra as it takes its inspiring spectacle of trash-into-music around the world. 

Production began in 2010 when we traveled to Paraguay to film the children and the orchestra. We returned to the village in 2011 to film and check on the progress of three young children who recently entered the orchestra. We then resumed filming in 2012. We will also continue to follow the story in 2013. Landfill Harmonic shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments, but more importantly, it brings witness to the transformation of precious human beings.

Favio Chávez: Director of the “Los Reciclados” orchestra

Check out the Youtube video that gives an overview of this inspiring project.

Youtube.com - Landfill Harmonic

This link will take you to the Kickstarter site that gives a more complete description of the project and its broader vision.  The Kickstarter program has been fully funded, so this link is for information only at this point.

Landfill Harmonic Description

I am sending this article to friends around the world hoping that they may be inspired to use the same ingenuity in their developing world communities.

Enjoy!

Al