How the Orchestra was assembled

While running a waste recycling project at the Cateura landfill for eight years, environmental engineer Favio Chávez got to know the kids and families living there, where more than 40% of children don't finish school because they have to find work. With a musical background of his own, he started teaching them to play — at first, just to keep them out of the landfill.

"The children knew nothing about music, and it was very difficult to contact their parents, because many of them weren't living with their children," Chávez has said. Over time, parents began to notice that music was keeping their kids out of trouble — some even reclaimed children they'd previously given up.

Soon more kids wanted lessons than there were instruments to teach with. So Chávez and Nicolás "Colá" Gómez, one of the landfill's trash pickers, started experimenting: string and wind instruments built from oil tin cans, forks, bottle caps, and whatever else the landfill gave up, refined over time until they actually sounded right.

For years, almost no one outside Cateura knew the orchestra existed. Then, in 2012 a short teaser went online and set off a wave that hasn't really stopped since. The orchestra grew from a handful of kids to dozens, and interest from families in the community grew with it — enough that, just before Landfill Harmonic's 2016 theatrical release, the Cateura music school opened its own building and now teaches music and instrument-building to more than 200 kids.

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The Film’s Protagonists

Favio Chavez

Teacher, mentor, and director of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura

Favio grew up in Carapeguá, Paraguay, two hours from Asunción. He started working at nine, learned guitar young, and was directing his church choir by eleven. He studied environmental engineering and in 2006 began working on a recycling program in Cateura, where the city's main landfill sits. Once he understood what the local kids needed, he opened a music school — and the Recycled Orchestra grew out of it.

Nicolas Gomez (Colá)

Trash collector and empirical luthier of recycled instruments

Nicolás grew up in Emboscada, 50 kilometers from Asunción. His father died when he was seven, and he went to work to help support his mother and eight siblings. After thirty years of construction labor, he moved to Cateura to collect and recycle trash — steady income, in his words, because "there would always be garbage, and that means I will always have a job." He met Favio in Cateura, and together they built the first recycled instruments.

Ada Rios

Ada was 14 when first interviewed. Now a college student pursuing two degrees in Music Education, at the National Conservatory and the School of Fine Arts in Paraguay, on a half scholarship, and was invited to join the National Philharmonic of Paraguay as head of the viola section.

Violin student

Tania Vera Hertz

Tania was 14 when the cameras first found her; had joined the orchestra at eight. She earned a scholarship to pursue a degree in Business Administration, is still a student at the music school, teaches violin to younger kids, and is now the mother of a baby girl.

Violin student

Esteban Larrazabal

Esteban joined the Recycled Orchestra at 14. He's about to graduate from the University of Columbia in Paraguay with a degree in Tourism and Hospitality, still plays drums for a local rock band, and hopes to one day own a car to haul his drum kit.

Drums student

Maria Rios

Violin student

Maria was 15 at her first interview. She teaches violin to young children and continues her own music studies at the school.

Noelia Rios

Noelia was 12 at her first interview. Still studying at the music school while working part-time, and now the mother of a baby boy. She is Ada’s little sister.

Violin student

Jorge Rios

Jorge is Ada and Noelia's father. A former trash picker in his teenage years and a longtime member of the Music School's Poets Association. He and his wife run a tailor shop.

Parent of two violin players

Miriam Cardozo

Miriam is Ada and Noelia's grandmother, and Maria's mother. She is the one responsible for enrolling all girls in the music school and the orchestra in the first place.

Grandmother and mother of violin players

David Ellefson & Megadeth

In 2013, Megadeth bassist David Ellefson traveled to Paraguay to meet the Recycled Orchestra. He and the band have kept up a friendship with the kids and Favio ever since.