Rethinking Social Action through Music

Thus began a 1997 article entitled "Music schools: more civility and culture" ("Escuelas de Música" 1997, 6). Did music education manage "to unite what weapons tore apart" and bring civility and peace to Medellín, the most dangerous city on Earth? From the 1970s to the early 1990s, Colombia's second city was home to Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel, and it sat in the midst of a national conflict that had been bubbling for decades. It gained notoriety as the murder capital of the world. In the 1990s, aiming to reverse the city's fortunes, the municipal and regional governments produced several strategic development plans that led to some striking urban policies, the best known of which, implemented by Mayors Sergio Fajardo (2004-07) and Alonso Salazar (2008-11), was labelled "social urbanism." Many of the city's iconic features date from this period. Library parks, designed by leading architects, were constructed in some of the city's most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and cable cars appeared to carry people up the steep hillsides that led to them. Another novel transport solution, an outdoor escalator, put the violence-ravaged barrio of Comuna 13 on the tourist map.
[2021]

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