Viva la (Violin) Revolución
Wassim Haddid, DeEMOS project in France
Wassim Haddid, of Alfortville, near Paris, France, comes to grips with his violin bow during a session of the DEMOS Project. Inspired by such musical programs as El Sistema in Venezuela, El Sistema USA, and the Big Noise in Scotland, the Demos Project in France is designed to expose children between the ages of 7 and 12, from so-called difficult urban zones, to classical music. The project is the outgrowth of the Demos Orchestra, an ambitious program that in 2010 took 450 children living in disadvantaged areas of the Parisian suburbs and taught them to play an instrument from scratch through four hours a week of group work. That group had the chance to share the stage with the violin superstar Anne-Sophie Mutter and the London Symphony Orchestra. But the project is about more than teaching music, the British newspaper The Independent has noted: “It is also about rehabilitating the image of the banlieues, the stigmatised suburbs around Paris that the French associate with the violent youth riots of 2005, criminal gangs—and . . . the [2010] collapse of the national football team (many of whom were born in troubled banlieues).”
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