Escuela de cateura.
Recycling, education, social inclusion
Asunción, , Paraguay
2006
The Cateura Recycled Instruments Orchestra is a musical group of young people and children who live in the community around the Cateura landfill, the main and largest landfill in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay.
This orchestra uses recycled instruments, made from waste from the neighborhood landfill in the luthier’s workshop. In this workshop, violins, violas, cellos, double basses, guitars, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, trombones and percussion instruments are built from garbage. Don Cola, as a recycler, has access to the landfill from where he rescues the recycled materials that he will later use in the making of the recycled instruments.
Don Cola knows the materials to use and has the measurements and templates for the string instruments he is going to build. Once the structure of the instrument is assembled, the orchestra director and the musicians of each instrument place the strings and other accessories on each instrument, making the necessary finishing touches by testing the instrument: sound, tuning, etc.
Becomes Music
The recycled wind instruments are built in the workshop of Don Tito Romero, a wind instrument luthier. After a period of experimentation, he currently makes soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, trumpets, flutes and trombones.
The Orchestra plays classical music, folk music, Paraguayan music, Latin American music and also contemporary music by the Beatles or Frank Sinatra.
The Cateura Orchestra has traveled the world and has played at the United Nations, with Metallica, Steve Wonder and in national theaters in many countries.
2010