MIM exhibits recycled trash instruments from Paraguay

By Ruben Hernandez

The 20 young musicians in the orchestra named La Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura (“The Orchestra of Instruments Recycled from Cateura”) perform classical music by Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven as well as pop by the Beatles, Henry Mancini, and even Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” on instruments made from the trash from the landfill they live on in Asuncion, Paraguay.  

Most of these young musicians are sons and daughters of poor parents so poor they must pick through society’s cast-offs to eke out a living.

In April, some of the instruments of La Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura will be in a permanent display in the Latin American wing at the MIM. They will be honored at the instrument museum alongside the Steinway piano John Lennon used to compose “Imagine,” and the custom guitars of Santana, Elvis Presley, and Eric Clapton.

 “We want to bring the children to MIM, but also have them interact with other schoolchildren in the Phoenix area,” says Daniel Piper, MIM curator of musical instruments. “We want to show these young people the musical instrument exhibit we have created from their instruments from the landfill and repurposed trash.”

He adds the MIM special exhibition for the landfill orchestra will feature eight instruments made by Nicholas Gomez, another resident of the Paraguay dump, including a cello, viola, violin, lute, and drum. The MIM also will display wind instruments made by Tito Romero, a trumpet repairman near Asuncion who Chavez asked to repurposed scavenged metal and pipes into saxophones, clarinets, and flutes.

 “The significance of this is you have these kids in this town in Paraguay with so little, and where the tradition of music has died out. This provides them with an opportunity to express themselves at a high level. That’s phenomenal,” Piper says. “Contrast this with the United States, where music is being cut out of school budgets; that it only has value as entertainment. Without this music, those children in Cateura would feel lost.”

Piper expresses enthusiasm at an exhibit that ties such important themes together – music, environmentalism, recycling, and sustainability. 

“We want to highlight this recycling theme throughout the exhibition,” he says. “Traditional cultures for thousands of years have been using recycled materials from the environment around them to make music. In the modern age, you have the waste products of an industrialized world. Take the steel drums of Trinidad. The steel drum orchestra instruments came from trash. They came from discarded 55-gallon oil barrels.”

The inventiveness of mankind to make music is the kind of theme the MIM was founded to showcase, Piper says.

“It’s a beautiful story and fits in very well with this them of ingenuity of humans around the world using what they have at their disposal to create music.”

Piper says the MIM is trying to raise funds to bring the La Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados to the musical museum for a concert and instrument-making workshops in July, and all donations are welcome.