A Drumbeat of Hope

Let me tell you about the night music changed something in me, and even more in my Little Brother, a child I mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters.

I didn’t tell him much about the concert, just that it would be something special.

It had been a hard year. The bullying at school had stopped, but the hurt lingered in ways I couldn’t always see. What helped him most was music — the kind he made himself. A pot became a drum. A paper tube turned into a trumpet. Sometimes we did a duet, me puffing clumsy notes through the “trumpet,” and him drumming out a rhythm that sounded a little like joy finding its way home.

So, when I saw that the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura was coming to Toronto for The Promise of Music: World Congress on the Social Impact of Music, I knew I had to take him. Their story is one of inspiration. Children from Paraguay who play instruments made from discarded trash. It felt like something he could relate to, the way rhythm sometimes does when nothing else can. I thought maybe, in their music, he’d hear something of his own, that same spark of resilience every child carries when faced with challenge.

Before I continue, let me tell you a bit about these remarkable young musicians.

They come from Cateura, a neighbourhood built around the main landfill of Asunción, Paraguay. Many families there earn a living by collecting and sorting garbage. Years ago, a technician and music teacher named Favio Chávez began teaching music to children in the community. When there weren’t enough instruments to go around, he teamed up with a local recycler, Nicolás “Cola” Gómez, and together they built new ones from what they could find. From waste, they created possibility. And from possibility, harmony.

Their story had already travelled farther than most dreams ever do, and that night, it had found its way to us.

My Little Brother could barely sit still. He kept asking what kind of music it would be, but I wanted it to be a surprise. We sat among people of all ages and backgrounds, families, students, elders, and children, gathered from every corner of the world. Before the music began, the conductor invited the audience to call out where we were from. Voices rose around the hall: Brazil, Japan, Egypt, Canada. I shouted “Guyana!” and my Little Brother called out “Ireland!” The crowd cheered, a wave of warmth and welcome rippling through the room.

Then the lights dimmed, and the stage filled with young musicians holding instruments unlike anything I’d ever seen. Violins and cellos crafted from oil cans and baking tins, flutes made from old pipes and pieces of wood, and drums topped with stretched X-ray film that caught the stage light like glass. Each instrument looked like a story waiting to be heard. I looked over at him and saw that look of discovery and wonder that only a child can have, like watching a rainbow form after rain and believing, with their whole heart, that the world had done something magical just for them.

The lights held for a moment, a hush, the kind that makes the whole room lean forward. Then they began to play, and the words I use next will never come close to what it truly felt like in that moment.

It was unlike anything I’d ever heard. The sound carried its own story, you could almost hear where the instruments came from, how they’d once been broken or discarded. But in the hands of these young musicians, they became something radiant, transforming what the world had thrown away into light. The music wrapped around us, soft at first, then bold and alive. It felt like the whole room was breathing as one, carried by something larger than all of us.

I glanced at my Little Brother, his hands pressed to his chest as if he could feel the music moving through him. They played music by John Lennon, Coldplay, Frank Sinatra and many others from other countries. The rough edges of their handmade instruments gave the melodies a heartbeat, filling the room with something real, something that felt like gratitude.

But it wasn’t until the youngest member, only about ten, stepped forward with his handmade trumpet, its metal softly gleaming under the lights, that my Little Brother’s eyes widened, almost as if he could see himself on the stage. He spoke no English but had learned to introduce himself and to let us know how happy he was to be with us, his smile both nervous and proud. A child who had never been on a plane now standing halfway across the world, brave enough to share his voice with strangers. Then he began to play, pouring his whole heart into every note, standing tall with a kind of pride that filled the room.

When the applause finally broke out, it was thunderous. The young musicians all bowed, smiling with the quiet confidence of people who had turned hardship into harmony. Beside me, he didn’t move. He just stared at the stage, eyes shining, hands in his lap. When he finally looked up, there was a quiet smile on his face — the kind that speaks without sound.

Later, as we walked to the car, he tapped his fingers against his leg, slow and steady, like he was keeping time with something only he could hear. Then he looked up at me and said, “It sounded a bit like my drum.”

I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “A lot like it.”

He thought about that for a moment, watching the sky. “I think I’m good at it,” he said softly, almost to himself.

Something warm unfolded in my chest, like my heart was being hugged from the inside.

He wasn’t just talking about music. He was realizing that what he made had worth — that he had worth. And in that quiet moment, I remembered too that even when life breaks the rhythm, children keep the beat until the world remembers how to dance again.

— A Big Brother

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