VIDEO/ BOOK: The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra + Other Trashy Links!

[Ryan Goble]

This is much more interesting than Oscar singing "I Love Trash."  A friend forwarded this video to me about the:

Landfill Harmonic reveals a mind-boggling, inventive effort to change that - musical instruments made from trash. In the barrios of Paraguay, a humble garbage picker uses his ingenuity to craft instruments out of recycled materials - and a youth orchestra is born. Music arises and children find new dreams.

This short is a nice tie in to the popular YA Novel Trash by Andy Mulligan ((that I have not finished reading yet but it seems pretty cool so far).

From Booklist
In an unnamed Third World city, Rat, Raphael, and Gardo live with thousands of other kids like them in a garbage dump, where they dig through the detritus looking for anything that could be profitable. When an important person loses something valuable in the refuse, the three boys embark on an engrossing, sobering mystery characterized by stealing, lying, and police brutality as well as generosity, trust, and ingenuity. Multiple characters describe the adventure, and although the switch between narrators may initially seem disorienting (a priest, housemother, and tombstone maker also provide their integral perspectives), the story flows more smoothly as it progresses, bolstered by the young characters’ well-articulated, authentic thoughts, feelings, and voices. Throughout, the boys’ significant sense of devotion and morality leads them from lives of desperation to miraculous possibilities. The culminating scenes contribute important elements of Day of the Dead celebrations and Robin Hood themes, further increasing the novel’s usefulness for discussion and study. Grades 6-9. --Andrew Medlar --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

And lastly, links nicely to this amazing PBS documentary Garbage Dreams ...

 

Giving new meaning to "trash culture!"