One of Venezuela’s most celebrated musicians, the pianist Gabriela Montero, has called on concert halls and music promoters to cut ties with her country’s world-renowned youth orchestra as a result of Nicolás Maduro’s alleged theft of this year’s presidential election.
The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela (SBSOV), which has close ties to Maduro’s administration, is scheduled to perform at some of Europe’s most prestigious classical music venues in January to mark the 50th anniversary of Venezuela’s world-famous music training programme, El Sistema.
The tour, which includes concerts at London’s Barbican, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Berlin Philharmonic, will coincide with the expected start of Maduro’s third term, despite widespread suspicions that he stole July’s election.
Even regional allies Brazil and Colombia – whose leaders have longstanding ties to Maduro’s political movement, Chavismo – have refused to recognise Maduro’s claim of victory. Their leftwing presidents, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, are not expected to attend the 10 January inauguration in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. This month Petro said it was clear that Venezuelans “no longer wanted” the Chavistas in power.
The Venezuelan orchestra has been celebrated around the world for its effervescent performances and work training virtuoso musicians from poor backgrounds. But critics claim that in recent years – as Venezuela has slipped into authoritarian rule and economic turmoil – Maduro’s regime has turned the orchestra into an international propaganda tool. Maduro’s close allies the vice-president and oil minister, Delcy Rodríguez, and the president’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, were appointed to El Sistema’s board in 2018.
“El Sistema is essentially a political organisation … because it’s run out of the office of the president and its board of directors includes high-profile politicians including Nicolás Maduro’s son and Delcy Rodríguez,” said Geoffrey Baker, the author of a book called El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth.
Montero said the world should no longer tolerate such “music-washing” after Venezuela’s election on 28 July, for which voting tallies published by the opposition suggest Maduro lost to his now-exiled rival Edmundo González Urrutia.
“The cultural sector must no longer facilitate the overt promotion of a manifestly failed ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ through the emotive optics of Venezuela’s youth orchestras,” the pianist, who was born in Caracas, told the Guardian.
“Once we succeed in removing the regime by implementing the will of the Venezuelan people, we can restore moral independence to our musical and educational mission. Until such a time, regime-owned entities have no place in the world’s great concert halls,” said Montero, who recently received the Human Rights Foundation’s Václav Havel international prize for creative dissent.
Montero urged fellow artists “to show solidarity with the Venezuelan people in this hour of dire crisis, by ceasing to do business with a Venezuelan regime that continues to hold our country hostage, that refuses to recognse the will of the vast majority”.
She said: “It is morally incoherent to continue profiting from the superficially compelling, marketing-friendly message of social transformation through music, while partnering with an autocratic narco-state that condemns an entire society to abject misery, including our musicians and their families.”
The pianist issued a particular plea to the London-based classical music promoter Askonas Holt, urging the company to stop working with the SBSOV, which performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall just days after July’s election.
The arts management company’s website boasts of “a longstanding relationship” with the orchestra stretching back to its first European tour in 2007.
In a statement, Donagh Collins, the company’s chief executive, said: “Askonas Holt has been arranging international tours for the orchestras and choirs of El Sistema for nearly 20 years, clearly predating Maduro, with each tour usually taking up to two years to plan and deliver.
“The tour of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in January 2025 started its journey long before any plans for an inauguration in Caracas and there is no link between the two events. We are working with concert halls across Europe who want to present El Sistema and who do not view their presentations as being a reflection on a government or party.”
The superstar Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel declined to comment on calls for a boycott of the orchestra he leads. But a representative denied the orchestra was a propaganda tool for Maduro, claiming “the opposite is true”.
“It is well documented how, after Gustavo spoke out against the Maduro government in 2017, the regime chose to cancel US and international tours with both the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela,” said the representative, who declined to be named.
“[El Sistema] receives state funding, and has since its inception, as do its orchestras, but just because an entity is funded by the state, that does not automatically make it a propaganda tool,” the conductor’s representative added.
Montero argued that musicians and promoters should not shirk their responsibility to challenge the situation in Venezuela, where more than 1,600 people were detained as part of a post-election crackdown.
“Musicians are not a privileged class of citizen, granted immunity from their common duty of care to reject tyrannical systems. Nor are they protected from the grim realities of state failure,” Montero said.
“Classical music itself, however powerful an elixir, possesses no intrinsic immunity card by virtue of its beauty alone. On the contrary, the great composers have shown us that it is the role of music – and art in general – to reveal, confront and temper man’s darkest excesses, not to conceal them behind convenient marketing mantras.”
Baker said that while the media often questioned how repressive and authoritarian states used Premier League football clubs to “sports-wash” their reputations, much less attention was paid to the use of music for the same purpose.
“But … in many ways it’s exactly the same phenomenon and it requires exactly the same kind of analysis that people are willing to give to football these days,” Baker said.
Collins said Askonas Holt considered its work with El Sistema “to be a partnership with a world-leading socio-educational programme for children and teenagers from deprived and challenging backgrounds”.
“It has been recognised internationally as a beacon for education through the medium of classical music … We are proud to have played a fundamental role in determining its success and international influence, celebrating their excellent standard of musicianship and demonstrating to the world a visceral expression of the power and joy of music-making,” said Collins, adding that his company was “opening up opportunities on the international stage for young musicians”, such as the conductors Dudamel, Domingo Hindoyan and Rafael Payare.
“Askonas Holt also works with orchestras that are similarly committed to transforming lives through music, as well as those on the frontline of international conflicts such as the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,” Collins said. “We think our work is even more important in today’s world, where cultural exchange can be a powerful tool to keep borders open, to shine a light on oppressed communities and to build bridges between nations who have turned their backs on one another.”
Source: theguardian.com
