Rowena’s mother was nervous about her English, when I asked her if I could interview her. We were sitting in a hallway in downtown Manila while the Orchestra of Filipino Youth (OFY) rehearsed in a large room where bankers once did business. She had traveled with her daughter two hours from their small house in a Manila slum to the downtown headquarters of Ang Misyon, the large Sistema program of the Philippines. Now she sat and listened as the orchestra rehearsed a Mozart symphony, with her daughter playing in the second violin section.
The rehearsal room used to be a bank on the ground floor of the large corporate headquarters of Lopez Family’s First Generation Holdings Corporation. The bank had left, and the space became a fitness center for the wives of management leaders. A few years ago, the wives voted to give their gym space to the El Sistema program. Ang Misyon’s office is in the former bank vault, and its various top orchestras rehearse in the open bank space. Many kids travel hours each way to get there, as Rowena does—the twelve “satellite” programs in the slum neighborhoods generate students eager to join the OFY, and OFY students serve as faculty in the satellite programs.
Around the world, important El Sistema business unfolds in hallways and courtyards—parents bond, younger siblings develop a hunger to play, dreams are shared, as parents (mostly mothers) wait. I asked Rowena’s mother if I could interview her for a book I was writing. She apologized for her English but said she would do anything she could to help Ang Misyon.
She told me that Rowena was not a particularly good player, but she tries very hard. She loves the sound of classical music, and now, when she is bored, she doesn’t turn to the Internet but practices. Rowena has less time for schoolwork because she practices the violin every day, but her grades have improved anyway. (Rowena’s mother, like many parents across the world who made this observation to us, was slightly mystified about how this could be.)
Rowena didn’t play well at her audition for the OFY, but they accepted her anyway. The OFY music leaders told her that her technical skill was not really good enough to qualify her, but that they were going to take her in anyway because they sensed her attitude and potential. Rowena took this to heart, her mother told me, and for the next three weeks till she started with the OFY, she got up at 4 AM every day to practice for three hours before school. She plays much better now, and her concentration has improved.
I asked Rowena’s mom if she herself is musical. She laughed and shook her head. I asked if she sings, since I had been told every Filipino naturally sings. More demurrals. I asked if she sings karaoke. Bingo! Hand went to mouth, covering the embarrassed laugh. Yes. With her daughter playing the violin? Yes. “And my other daughter is a good dancer; so she dances.”
What songs do you like to do together? Long pause. “’I Will Survive,’ the way Gloria Gaynor does it,” she said finally. “We love that song.
“It worried me for a long time,” she added, “that Rowena said she was not good at praying. I told her to keep trying, trying was what mattered. Now she tells me that when she plays the violin she is praying. And she is getting better all the time.”
—Eric