Local musicians will join together for a jam session this week to raise funds for Paraguayan youth orchestra, Landfill Harmonic.
Host of the jam session, Deanna Ingravalle, has been following the progress of the Landfill Harmonic group for the past five months and said she had taken great interest in their movement, displaying photographs of them on a wall in her cafe, The 3844.
Landfill Harmonic is an orchestra which uses instruments made from recycled rubbish, and the musicians live by the motto “the world sends us garbage… we send back music”.
According to Landfill Harmonic, the youths in the orchestra were extremely disadvantaged and lived amid rubbish dumps.
Most of the groups’ parents help their families to survive by picking things out of the wasteland to sell.
“We’ve seen cases where parents with addiction problems have quit taking drugs to go to their kid’s concerts and in a lot of cases, the parents have gone back to finish school because their kids are being seen all over the world, they think ‘they are going forward, I want to as well’,” orchestra director Favio Chavez said.
Ms Ingravalle said her daughter inspired the fundraising event.
“I was talking to my 17 year-old daughter who plays guitar and she said, ‘why don’t we have a jam session?’,” Ms Ingravalle said.
The jam session will run from noon to 7pm on Saturday with an entry fee of $5 at The 3844.
“I just want to raise as much money as we can, it’s going to be very casual and very laid back,” Ms Ingravelle said.
“A lot of these young kids (local young musicians) haven’t done many gigs… I’d like to expose them as young local artists to show them what we do have here.”
Landfill Harmonic was first revealed in a documentary a couple of years ago and is now raising funds to make a feature-length film and to go on a world tour.
“They want to start a Landfill Harmonic movement all over the world,” Ms Ingravalle said.
The group needs to raise $175,000 to qualify for government funding for the film and if they raise a further $25,000, they qualify for funding for their world tour.
For more information about Landfill Harmonic, visit
www.facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie
