Cateura’s Melodious Mess Inspires Change

An orchestra born out of a dumping site in a small town in Paraguay that takes all the bad effects of gentrification in the country’s capital city, Asunción, is giving some of the youth growing up in dire poverty access to stages and audiences across the globe and seems to be an apt way of actualising Letta Mbulu’s sentiments in a 1976 song

In the 1976 jazz number, “There’s Music in the Air,” Letta Mbulu’s sultry voice delivers the words: “There’s music in the air/ It makes the sorrow go/ Let the music take you there/ Far from the world you know.”

These words, simple as they are, give the most earnest testament to the power of the universal language that is music. It holds a power that few other things in the world do. It is no wonder then that the community of Cateura has committed themselves to using music as a vehicle for inspiring change across the world.