From Trash To Tchaikovsky

Filled with stamps from the 15 or so countries he has visited, Brandon Cobone has an impressive passport for an 18-year-old. Even more so considering that Cobone was born and raised in a shantytown in Asunción, Paraguay, on the margins of the city's main landfill.

He's a member of the Orquesta de InstrumentosReciclados de Cateura, or the Recycled Instruments Orchestra of Cateura, which uses music to give the children of the slum the skills to build a better future.

The orchestra was created by environmental engineer,Favio Chávez, a music lover who was working in Cateura with the garbage pickers who comb the vast landfill for recyclables. When they asked him to give their children music lessons, Chávez didn't have enough of his own instruments to go around. So he drew upon the one resource he had in abundance—trash—making the first violin out of a strainer, a metal plate and a bit of metal piping. 

"It didn't sound like much," Chávez acknowledged. But he teamed up with a carpenter and little by little they developed instruments that both looked and sounded more or less like the real thing. 

In 2012, a group of filmmakers posted a teaser for a documentary about the musicians online, and the Orquesta has since become an international phenomenon. It has played in stages from Germany to Japan and even toured South America with the homemade instruments as an opening act for Metallica.

Despite its success on the international music scene, the Orquesta is less about forging world-class musicians than turning disenfranchised kids into full-fledged citizens.

For more information
Website:http://www.recycledorchestracateura.com/
Video:http://www.sparknews.com/en/video/landfill-musicians