El Sistema at 50: the rise and fall (and rise again?) of Venezuela’s controversial music programme

‘Corruption, abuse, propaganda – it’s time we washed our hands of El Sistema,’ began Jessica Duchen’s feature article in The Times in early January. In The Guardian, the Venezuelan pianist and human rights activist Gabriela Montero asked promoters to cut ties with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra (SBSO), about to embark on a European tour: ‘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.’ Marshall Marcus, ex-head of music at the Southbank Centre and former employee of El Sistema, mounted a spirited defence (also in The Guardian), urging the SBSO’s musicians to ignore the criticism and just play.

How did this beloved institution, once hailed by Simon Rattle as ‘the future of music,’ become the focus of such controversy?

Founded in 1975, El Sistema burst into the global imagination in 2007 with the Proms debut of Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, with its flag-themed jackets and rip-roaring ‘Mambo.’ There followed an extraordinary boom period, in which its top orchestras were welcomed into major concert halls and El Sistema-inspired programmes sprang up around the world. With its tales of transforming the lives of Venezuela’s poorest, El Sistema became a beacon of hope for the classical music world. Its founder, José Antonio Abreu, was compared to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

© Nohely Oliveros

2014 was a watershed year for Venezuela – where the political situation deteriorated dramatically – as well as for El Sistema. As a major outbreak of civil unrest unfolded, Dudamel and Abreu remained silent, contributing instead to official celebrations for the Day of Youth with a gala concert. Gabriela Montero responded with an open letter, condemning them for ignoring the political upheaval around them. El Sistema found itself the object of growing criticism and Dudamel’s attempts to distance himself from political developments were labelled a ‘hypocritical masquerade’ in El Nacional, Venezuela’s leading newspaper.

The year also saw the publication of my own book on El Sistema. A specialist in Latin American music and initially a fan of the programme, I changed my mind during a year of research in Venezuela, where I witnessed authoritarian methods, glaring gender inequities, allegations of sexual abuse, and far fewer poor children than claimed. Although El Sistema was presented as a social programme, students’ wellbeing and community development were regularly subordinated to artistic goals. The SBSO’s extraordinary playing was built on fearsome levels of discipline and intensity that sometimes tipped over into bullying and exploitation. In contrast to the saintly figure depicted overseas, Abreu was portrayed by some Venezuelan journalists as a controversial, domineering politician. One labelled him ‘The Philanthropic Ogre’ (in an article titled El Ogro Filantrópico published in the Venezuelan magazine Exceso in March 1994); another described El Sistema as ‘a kind of male brotherhood, a Knights Templar of classical music, with Abreu at the centre of the cult.’

El Sistema’s supporters reacted badly, but their objections were soon undercut by other research. In 2016, New England Conservatory professor Lawrence Scripp and former El Sistema violinist Luigi Mazzocchi published a VAN Magazine article describing my account as ‘dead on’ and calling for major reforms in El Sistema. Highlighting a culture of fear, intimidation, and retribution, Mazzocchi dismissed its claims to be a social programme: ‘All that matters is how good it sounds.’

In 2017 a major evaluation by El Sistema’s funder, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was released, which found no convincing evidence of social impact, and only 17 per cent of students came from below the poverty line, in a country where 47 per cent of children were deemed poor. It concluded that El Sistema illustrated ‘the challenges of targeting interventions towards vulnerable groups of children in the context of a voluntary social program.’ In other words, El Sistema, long hailed as a model of social inclusion, was actually socially exclusive. At the same time, IDB evaluations from 1997 re-emerged, revealing that serious questions had been raised about El Sistema’s methods twenty years earlier.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s political crisis was deepening. Dudamel had been a loyal government servant for a decade; foreign minister Delcy Rodríguez had described him as ‘our best ambassador to the world.’ But in 2017, after three years of growing public criticism, Dudamel finally distanced himself from the regime. With the country in dire economic straits, El Sistema’s orchestras stopped touring and many musicians emigrated. Abreu died in 2018, though not before claims about his educational qualifications were revealed to be false.

© Sam Comen

It seemed that El Sistema had reached a nadir, but worse was to come.

In 2021, sexual abuse allegations appeared on social media and were taken up by the press. As reported in The Washington Post, former student Angie Cantero claimed that El Sistema ‘was/is plagued by paedophiles, pederasts, and an untold number of people who have committed the crime of statutory rape.’ Behind its attractive façade, she alleged, ‘there are a lot of disgusting people who love to deceive girls and teenagers, taking advantage of their position of power and renown within El Sistema.’ Journalists from Venezuela, Germany, Spain, and Argentina followed up and provided supporting evidence. Mazzocchi, the ex-El Sistema violinist, had previously claimed that teacher-student relationships were ‘the norm.’ Sistema Scotland (known for its Big Noise programme) and Sistema England (now run by Nucleo) issued critical public statements, and some El Sistema-inspired programmes in the UK dropped any reference to El Sistema in their publicity.

In 2022, Venezuelan journalists revealed that El Sistema had been loaned $124 million by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for the construction of seven regional centres, yet not one of them had been built. El Sistema had roundly failed to achieve its top institutional priority of the previous 25 years. One of classical music’s favourite success stories looked increasingly like a myth.

By 2022, though, Dudamel had made up with the Venezuelan regime, and he began travelling home again. Tours were back on the cards. In 2023, Nicola Benedetti invited the SBSO to a high-profile residency at the Edinburgh Festival. The National Children’s Orchestra toured the US the following year, and 2025 saw the SBSO back in Europe for its 50^th anniversary. Despite years of scandals and documented failings, the music industry rolled out the red carpet again. El Sistema continues to have friends in high places who wish to see its reputation rebuilt: Benedetti is an official ‘Big Sister’ of Sistema Scotland, while Marshall Marcus – author of the recent paean in the Guardian – is president of Sistema Europe. El Sistema’s return to the international scene since 2023 underlines that the organisation had become thoroughly entwined with the classical music sector in its boom years, and many remained deeply attached to the mythical story despite the many holes that had emerged.

Nonetheless, controversy came to a head again last month. The SBSO’s celebratory tour began the day after the inauguration of Venezuela’s dictatorial president, Nicolás Maduro, widely accused of having stolen the previous year’s election. A decade ago, criticisms of Dudamel were mainly about his passivity and silence. But the Human Rights Foundation, which has picketed Dudamel’s concerts in New York and Los Angeles, now accuses the conductor of ‘engaging in shameless propaganda and providing cover for the Venezuelan dictator.’

So far, the classical music world has paid little attention. Some have argued that El Sistema is separate from politics; others that Venezuela is hardly the only country with touring orchestras and a questionable government. But the SBSO is not simply a national or even state orchestra: El Sistema is operated by the Office of the President and is thus a direct extension of presidential power. In 2018 Maduro tightened his grip further, appointing both his son and vice-president to its board of directors. He personally announced lavish funding for overseas orchestral tours ‘to enamour the world,’ making his soft-power intentions clear. The SBSO is a regime orchestra, sent on political missions (such as accompanying leaders to the UN). It is a unique entity, which arguably demands a unique response.

The Venezuelan regime sends out the SBSO as a symbol of peace, hope, and social transformation – while ruling violently over a despairing population that is emigrating in droves. This is art-washing in action, and reviews of the London concerts show that it works. As Rachel Halliburton wrote in The Arts Desk: ‘After the full orchestra came together for the resonant ending […], the whole audience rose to its feet for a moment that felt like everything to do with freedom and little to do with dictatorship.’

Where does all this leave El Sistema at 50? Few question its artistic success. It has produced lots of orchestral musicians and has put Venezuela firmly on the classical music map. It has been an object of admiration, inspiration, and imitation around the world – yet it remains poorly understood. Some achievements have been overplayed, and some common beliefs do not stand up to scrutiny.

El Sistema’s approach has never been standardised and codified, so talk of an ‘El Sistema method’ is misleading. Despite prominent claims that it is a ‘revolutionary programme,’ there is little new in its educational practices or ideas, which are firmly rooted in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the SBSO offers an unrivalled orchestral spectacle, in terms of programming and performance conventions it does not match innovators like Manchester Collective and Paraorchestra.

Some admirers point to a founding social philosophy, but this too is something of a mirage. The framing as ‘social action through music’ only emerged halfway through El Sistema’s history, and as Mazzocchi argued, it was more strategic rhetoric than substance. This would explain the disappointing findings of the 2017 impact study. El Sistema has popularised ideas like ‘music and social change’ in the classical sector – but between the evaluation and a deteriorating Venezuela, evidence of actual change is strikingly thin. Above all, as Jessica Duchen’s article recently reminded us, musical success has come at considerable cost: pedagogical, institutional, and ethical failures, and appropriation by a dictatorship for political ends.

© Nohely Oliveros - Fundamusical

El Sistema has displayed both the best and the worst of classical music – and they are intimately connected. In its heyday, its thrilling performances rested on excessive discipline and power imbalances that allowed abuse to thrive. Mazzocchi recalled: ‘Some of the teachers would actually say it out loud: “I do this [have sexual relationships] with my students because I think we’re actually helping them become better musicians, better violinists.”’ Similarly, the programme’s huge expansion post-2000 and its politicisation were two sides of the same coin. Presidents Chávez and Maduro offered El Sistema wholehearted support, but at the price of political collaboration (accompanying ministers overseas, receiving foreign dignitaries, pressing employees to vote for the government, playing in a propaganda video, and so on). In retrospect, the nationalist jackets and the mambo, which wowed the world in 2007, signalled not just ‘fiesta!’ but also musical populism: the merging of music education and authoritarian demagoguery. The seeds of El Sistema’s fall were there in its rise.

The international future of El Sistema depends on whether the classical sector is finally ready to confront this complex reality or whether it will continue to settle for the comforting myth. Most pressingly, will the music industry carry on embracing the cultural emissary of a brutal dictatorship? Or will it now, as Duchen suggests, wash its hands?

2025 has seen more public debate in the UK than at any time since 2014. Some journalists have paid closer attention. But there are still classical music leaders and writers who are willing to downplay the problems, ignore the research, and tiptoe around Dudamel’s political connections. Doing so may benefit El Sistema and their own fiefdoms and legacies, but sweeping major failings under the carpet ultimately serves neither music education nor the culture of classical music. They would do better to heed the alarms that have sounded repeatedly since the 1990s.

The El Sistema myth is unlikely to disappear any time soon: the Venezuelan regime is invested in it, the music industry sees it as a winning formula, and a global advocacy network is committed to keeping it alive. Dudamel and some other Venezuelan conductors continue to serve as influential cheerleaders; the myth is a key part of their brand. But the days when El Sistema looked like a bright future for classical music are long gone.

Geoffrey Baker is director of research at music and social action charity Agrigento Music, emeritus professor at Royal Holloway University of London, visiting research fellow at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the author of El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth and Rethinking Social Action Through Music.