Two students from a parish in San Ignacio de Velasco participated in the event, the Chiquitos Missions Festival. Sarah Miller Llana

On a mission: Like many young people in remote towns of eastern Bolivia, Adelina Anori Cunanguira has become a serious classical musician, inspired by a biennial baroque festival and the legacy left behind by missionaries 300 years ago. Sarah Miller Llana

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Music transforms kids and towns in remote area of Bolivia

Inspired by a biannual baroque festival and the legacy of missionaries, young people join choirs and take up the violin and Vivaldi in parishes across the country's eastern lowlands.

from the May 12, 2008 edition

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Adelina Anori Cunanguira conducts a rehearsal of the Peace and Wellness chorus in the Bolivian town of San Ignacio de Velasco.

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On a Thursday afternoon, Adelina Anori Cunanguira rushes to rehearsal with the children's orchestra she conducts, ahead of their performance in the festival. The kids, who range in age from 7 to late teens, run through the church grounds in sandals, their instruments dangling at their sides. But as Ms. Anori Cunanguira directs them through a piece by Italian composer G.B. Bassani, recovered from the archives in the nearby town of Santa Ana, they settle down. "Don't forget to be here at 1 p.m. tomorrow," she reminds them after practice. "I want you to concentrate, and look at the director. Good luck."

Anori Cunanguira epitomizes the success that music has brought to the mission towns. A demure woman in her late 20s, she comes from the indigenous town of Urubicha, where a music school was set up in the mid-1990s as the Chiquitos Missions Festival, as the baroque event is known, was born.

She had never studied music, but her father played the guitar and trumpet. Yet all her friends were joining, and, like any 16-year-old, she didn't want to miss out. Since then, she has mastered the clarinet and violin, and today sings in a professional choir. She travels the world, playing in concerts and recording CDs.

Music has not only changed her life – three of her 12 siblings also play professionally today – but that of her entire town. The music institute in Urubicha has received worldwide recognition. "No one even knew there was a town called Urubicha," she says. "What we were given allowed us to transform."

Now she feels a duty to help other kids in remote towns lift their lives through voice and Vivaldi. "Our ancestors played with the Jesuits," she says. "It is in our blood." When the Jesuits arrived in this area of the country, they brought their rich musical traditions, quickly setting up choirs of professional musicians in each mission. But when the priests were expelled in the mid-1700s, and economic decline followed, the towns were nearly forgotten. So, too, was their music.

At the time Lizardo Paraba was growing up on a cattle farm in Cotoca, an hour's drive down a washboard road from San Ignacio de Velasco, no music classes existed in school. Only the elderly played the flute, occasionally. Lizardo, a skinny teen wearing jeans and a baseball cap, never even thought about music, he says, until he saw the Chiquitos Missions Festival in 2004. "I wanted to play right away," says the 15-year-old, who signed up for violin classes as soon as the orchestra in his town was formed seven months ago. He has since learned how to read music and plays in the orchestra with two younger brothers and a cousin.

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