The people of Cataura began making musical instruments out of recycled trash. Eventually, the Recycled Orchestra emerged.
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In America as well as most of the Western world, we gorge ourselves on an unrelenting avalanche of disposable consumer goods. Plastic wrapped and palletized, the retail tsunami is forever pouring into our lives. Woven inextricably in with the spiritual, the emotional, the human, we live and die in an avalanche of the new, struggling to discard yesterday’s purchases, however humble, to make room for what is next. The least of us and the most of us alike, whether we purchase a gum ball or a Lamborghini, buy and buy and buy, at risk of forever confusing buying and having with actually living.
Then you see a video like this one. Where we find young people transcending the most devastating kind of poverty; taking garbage and creating such beauty. They take garbage and make music.
“A community like Cataura, is not a place to have a violin, in fact, a violin is worth more than a house here,” says one man in this promotional trailer for the film Landfill Harmonic. In Cataura, they recycle trash and sell it. They began making musical instruments out of recycled trash. Eventually, the Recycled Orchestra emerged. It was an empowering shift in a multitude of lives, all in the same stroke of a bow.
I feel joy and a bit of shame in watching this trailer. Joy for what these amazing people have done with the least of resources. Shame, for how little I suddenly feel I have done with the vast wealth I have, by comparison, perhaps squandered. But happily this story encourages me to create something remarkable as well. To leave consuming behind and instead, make the transformational decision to create.
I look forward to see the full length film. You can learn more about it here.
Wow.
With such world division in terms of poverty you have shown us in the west that anything is possible. Congratulation! May you prosper and grow.