Review: Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music

Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music by Tricia Tunstall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Quite an interesting story about community bands consisting of youth, becoming popular throughout the world. The book describes the history of the “el Sistema movement”, starting in Venezuela and growing in cities throughout the world. The idea is that professional musicians can give back to their community by leading a band of youth. The band tends to provide the instruments, the training, and the opportunities to play before audiences. The youth involved in the project gain by being involved as integral parts of a group endeavor, by learning that they can learn something new, and by learning new habits related to practice aiming at mastery. These last benefits of the program are the focus of the book. The authors claim that youth involved in these student bands and orchestras are less likely to be involved in the bad things happening in a community, like gangs. In some cases, the kids can choose gang life or being in a band. Story after story, in cities across the globe, the same benefits surface. The author does a good job of describing the good that the program can accomplish. It was kind of humorous to read the author repeat quite a few times that there hasn’t been time to objectively measure the benefits of the program, so they have to focus on the subjective and on stories. It struck me as humorous because I was picturing some similar types of programs that have similar social goals and results. For example, chess clubs could be another type of project used for social good, providing many of the same benefits mentioned above with the band project, but without, perhaps, the performance aspect and the emotion. Emotion, you say? The authors focus on the emotional aspects of playing and understanding music, providing another possible benefit of increasing the emotional intelligence of youth.

I was reminded of the musical “The Music Man” when reading this book. While the musical revolved around an itinerant bandleader with questionable intentions, he sold a town on a community youth band. And he presented similar benefits to the community as El Sistema present here. If pool halls were in the same league as gangs…


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