Music as an Agent of Social Change.

Music as an agent of social change: El Sistema USA; West- Eastern Divan Orchestra; Thai Blind Orchestra? Read/watch: Mina Yang, “El Sistema L.A.,” in Planet Beethoven: Classical Music at the Turn of the Millennium, selected pages (Attachment); "El Sistema," or "the system," is the name of a musical education program founded in Venezuela in 1975 by Jose Antonio Abreu, with the goal of providing underprivileged youth exposure to classical (art) music through learning how to plan an instrument. Gustavo Dudamel, the current conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, participated in this program as a youth and now is a proponent of it in Los Angeles. This article describes ways in which community organizations are taking up this cause.? --- Jon Fernquest, “Thailand’s First Blind Orchestra: Meet the Young Musicians, Bangkok Post, 10 Mar. 2015 http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning- news/493298/thailand-first-blind-orchestra- meet-the-young-musicians; “Blind Children Defy ‘Bad Karma’ to Play in Blind Orchestra, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzGZTPDby38; --- Clemency Burton-Hill, “West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: Uniting Arabs, Israelis,” BBC, 22 Aug. 2014, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140822-music-uniting-arabs-and-israelis; “An Introduction to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K22pkacxfN0 Reaction essay Read all three articles and write a reaction paper. What do you learn from these articles? Explain in each case how art music (classical music) is helping to solve a social problem. Think critically about these programs. Do you think they achieve their goals? And if they do not, does it matter? Write a thoughtful critical essay of the role of art in society, using these essays as a basis.