Orquestas Infantiles and Children’s Musical Education in Argentina

Arts education tends to be understood exclusively from its insertion into the formal education system, although its impact on educational trajectories is not only represented in the development of specific knowledge in the field but can also contribute with didactic volume to other disciplinary fields—as already recognized by UNESCO in the First World Conference on Arts Education in 2006—as well as opening new horizons in vocational terms. In Latin America, the development of musical training policies through children’s orchestras has become a trend at the beginning of the 21st century, unfolding in particular ways in the different countries of the region, mainly based on the so-called Venezuelan model. Based on the search for excellence and prioritizing classical European instruments and repertoires, El Sistema has generated the irruption of outstanding figures in the mainstream musical field. In Argentina, different public policies have been implemented since the late 20th century tending toward the development of children’s orchestras. Although there were government programs based on the Venezuelan system, there was also an alternative model: the Andrés Chazarreta social program based its actions on the use of American instruments and repertoires, and on collective training as a didactic strategy, opposed to the marked individualism that classical musical training promotes. In the 1970s, the choral movement in Argentina gave birth to outstanding cultural and artistic experiences. Nowadays, participation in this type of initiative stimulates the transformation of imaginaries about what young people can do with their futures, not only professionally, beyond musical vocations.