Soul music

Music lessons give migrant workers' children another string to their bow, helping them develop the confidence to strive for a better life. Guo Shuhan reports

If you by chance happen to pass the Beijing Lubo School for migrant workers' children and hear the squeaky notes of violins attempting the children's folk rhyme Little Star don't put your fingers in your ears.

After all the melody is being played by some 30 children after only one and a half months training.

In a shabby library-turned training classroom, which without fans is hot in the Beijing summer, the children stand in four neat lines. They are all studiously bowing, following the tutor's tempo and the transcriptions on the blackboard.

"I enjoy playing and tutor Xing praises me for my quick learning. My parents are looking forward to hearing my performance," says third-grader Song Peiyu, who moved with her parents to Beijing from Huaiyang county, eastern Henan province soon after her birth. Song is one of the 70 pupils in Lubo, located inside an old community in eastern Beijing, to attend the music classes - violin orchestra or chorus - twice a week since April.

Early this month, the children's chorus gave its first performance.

Children like Song, who are accustomed to moving around frequently with their low-paid worker parents, don't often have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. But thanks to Wings of Music, a children's musical charity, these children are discovering their talents on the violin, an instrument which most of them have never heard of before.

The charity project was co-founded with China Symphony Development Foundation last February. Through the free musical training, it hopes to help relieve migrant workers' children from feelings of solitude and inferiority.

The inspiration came from a thrilling performance at the National Center for Performing Arts by the Simon Bolivar Youth Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela last January. The orchestra is the apex of the South American Underdeveloped Nations Musical Assistance System. During the past three decades, the system has helped more than 290,000 poverty-stricken children drum up the courage to strive for a better life.

"If we can pass on the passion for music to this group of children, it could help them build up self-confidence and the courage to pursue a better future. At the very least, the experience will become a sweet memory for them," says Chen Qian, a graduate major in violin from Central Conservatory of Music and a founder of the charity project.

Besides children from Lubo, 60 students from Dandelion Junior High School, a school in Beijing's south suburb Daxing district also dedicated to the education of migrant workers' children, also joined the project last year. Plans for a drumset and a wind orchestra are on the way. By the end of this year, the project is about to train a total of 260 children.

Zhang Weixue, head of the Beijing branch of the Beats-9 Modern Percussion Club and coordinator for the upcoming drum-set orchestra, says he was shocked by the poor facilities the school offered.

Children, unequal in height from first to fifth grade, stand in rows in a simple gym room. Washed clothes hang at the back. At the entrance to the gym room, vegetables are piled next to the door of a small kitchen for teachers.