By AFP | 2025-01-30

LONDON -- Just two years ago, Lucas Cantero knew nothing about playing music.

On January 25, the 16-year-old Paraguayan played his drum -- made from discarded pallet wood, X-ray panels and copper rods -- in the opulent setting of London's Lancaster House.

"I would never have imagined that music could come from bits of wood and old X-rays," admitted the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura member.

The young and highly unorthodox ensemble takes its name from the biggest landfill site in the Paraguayan capital Asunción.

The members, Asunción residents from disadvantaged backgrounds, make their instruments from unwanted paint cans, plumbing pipes, oil drums, shoe brushes and an array of other waste.

They have forged everything from violins to trumpets.

About 10 members of the 60-strong group were in London, where they dazzled 200 guests -- diplomats, parliamentarians and business owners -- in the 19th-century mansion managed by Britain's Foreign Office near Buckingham Palace.

Their repertoire ranges from Mozart to Coldplay, via the Beatles and Frank Sinatra.

The ensemble launched in 2007 and now has played in about 50 countries.

"In these 18 years we have managed to set up a music school and create an orchestra with these recycled instruments that have attracted the attention of the whole world," its director, Favio Chavez, 49, told AFP.

"Not only because of how unusual the instruments are but also because of the talent and skill that these young people and children have in transforming the rubbish into music."

Preventing violence

Chavez came up with the idea for the project almost two decades ago when he arrived as a technician at the Cateura landfill site.

"I'm also a musician, and I spontaneously started teaching music to the children" living around the landfill, he explained.

The idea was to attract the teenagers to music and to lure them away from violence.

"It's a dangerous area where many events can tip a person the wrong way," noted Cantero.

They began by making "simple" instruments to learn on, not thinking at that point that they would stage concerts, said Chavez.

A music school and orchestra eventually followed.

The school now teaches about 450 children who, like Cantero, hope to progress into the orchestra.

"They learn practically from scratch with us, most of them, and they earn a place in the orchestra," Chavez said.

'Old bed and brush'

The teenagers start with "local performances, first in Paraguay, in the community they are from, then they apply to form the orchestra and then give tours around the world," he added.

Willian Wilson Lopez, among the 10 in London, heads the team responsible for making string instruments.

"My double bass is made from an oil drum, the remains of an old bed and a shoe brush," he explained.

"We never thought it would create a bridge that would bring us this far," the previous musical novice said of the community endeavor.

The orchestra's income from concerts is partly invested in helping Cateura's struggling population.

The initiative received a big boost about a decade ago when American filmmaker Graham Townsley released a documentary about the project called "Landfill Harmonic."

It led rock bands like Metallica and Megadeth to ask to play with the orchestra.