Cateura, a small impoverished town in Paraguary, is built on top of a landfill. The villagers make a living by digging through the trash and selling anything they find of worth; even if that is pieces of scrap metal or cardboard.
Favio Chavez, visited the village to help find a better solution for sorting through all the trash and decided he wanted to start a music school for the children. The only problem, any instruments given to the children would be worth more than their homes. “The family may have looked to sell or trade it,” Chavez claims. So he came up with another solution. Working with craftsman Nicolas Gomez, they built instruments from scrap metal to create the Cateura Orchestra of Recycled Instruments. A documentary is currently in development titled Landfill Harmonic, showing the true definition of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
Bottle caps are used as keys on old drain pipes to create makeshift saxophones and trumpets. Old barrels are used as the base for cellos and many more concoctions. This naturally leaves one question: How do they sound? The video should answer that question.
Make sure you visit landfillharmonicamovie.com to see how you can help.
