El Sistema In Prison

“In a project extending Venezuela’s renowned system of youth orchestras to some of the country’s most hardened prisons, hundreds of prisoners are learning a repertory that includes Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and folk songs from the Venezuelan plains. The budding musicians include murderers, kidnappers, thieves and, here at the women’s prison, dozens of narcomulas, or drug mules, as small-scale drug smugglers are called.”