An orchestra and a choir with braille harmonies

From the Buenos Aires corner of Sánchez de Bustamante and Avenida Rivadavia, the parishioners of the bars often see them hurry, with their white sticks, on the way to the essay.

And this place in the Almagro neighborhood attend every day The 55 musicians who make up the National Blind Band of Blindcontinuity of the one created by the teacher Pascual Grisolía when, in 1939, he dreamed of a School of Wind Instruments in the National Board of Blind.

The group is a pioneer in the world and every year performs concerts, monthly, in different parts of the country. For example, last year, to commemorate the International Day of Disability -it is celebrated on December 3 -, was presented at the Libertad Palace and at the Museum of the Casa Rosada with a popular repertoire.

The orchestra was accompanied by the members of the National Polyphonic Choir of blind Carlos Roberto Larrimbe, an entity created in 1947 and composed of 46 blind core or with an advanced level of visual decrease.

In the latter case, their scores are written in Braille notation. The copyists, especially trained, are the ones who fulfill this trade for this purpose. They are a community of artists who carries music in the soul. But in addition to expressing their art, they live it as a unique opportunity: integrating these national organizations, which they access by contest gives them job stability.

Also provides a place of belonging And the space to show their talent in a world in which being blind can play against them and where the greatest obstacle comes from the environment.

Cristian Alderete (46) is a trombonist of the band since 1996. Teacher, singer and paralympic athlete, says that Being part of the band was transcendental for their life.

“My passion for music was unveiling since my childhood, when I dreamed of being a famous singer. Then, play with the guitar that was at home but without knowing how to play, an entire exploration universe opened me. The other that fed a lot of passion for music was power Do it with other people. And that makes me happy and the others”Cristian says.

As for integrating the National Blind Band of the Blind, Cristian says that “when I just entered, very young, it was to reach an unknown universe, full of challenges. Years later, from consciousness, I understood that it was a space that allowed me to develop, with which I could economically hold my familycount on everything we can do with disabilities and run the focus of what we cannot ”.

Since to read in the Braille system they need their hands, and also to execute their instrument, they They must read the scores, memorize them and then play by heart. “Working so much with memory and pre -established guidelines with the director regarding the interpretation, is key,” he adds.

Cristian argues that one of the great challenges is to fight with small or great pitfalls regarding frustration.

In this regard, it manifests how important it is that every December 3 they are given visibility “to value diversity and not give space to segregationthat puts barriers to the development of a person with disabilities. ”

And defend: “I think Music gives us an unparalleled opportunity to build beautyfeelings, vibrations that, definitely, to whom we receive them, modify us. And this action can be carried out by a group of people who do not necessarily think or feel the same, we are immensely diverse but together we can build beauty. ”

Alderete is Paralympic athlete And for this he incorporated the discipline of training and knew how to understand that this same logic works positively in all aspects of life.

“Judo gives us many positive things to blind people, in particular the exercise of the perception of our own body, space and the other person.”

In 2023, he obtained the bronze medal at the Para-Panamericanos Games, in Santiago, Chile.

And as if this were not enough, these days he presented his first solo album, Sound territory.

“I recorded it with a beautiful group of musicians They have put their professionalism and heart so that this album goes out to turn around the world, ”he takes pride.

Para Tuio Fiorentino (63), Contact with music began at primary school: “Interestingly, I was not part, at the beginning. There was a music teacher who did not like how I sang and never called me. Until they changed it and a new one arrived. She heard me sing, came to the classroom one day and asked me if I wanted to be part of the school choir. ”

Tulio says they sang songs by Ariel Ramírez and Félix Luna. Later, he entered the Conservatory, where he had coral practice: “There we did the Renaissance, simple.”

It was then when He made contact with more professional choirs And he knew that his thing was in choral. Several years passed in which he looked for a place to sing. “In 1983, a group of people in the radical party wanted to form a choir to revive those old popular choirs of the Socialist Party of other times.”

An acquaintance took him and, from then on, he never stopped singing in a choir. He even had the opportunity to direct a children’s choir for 10 years.

Until the time to compete in the National Polyphonic Choir of Blind came.

Tulio admits that, at first, having certain reservations towards this type of groups: “I didn’t want to be in that and the truth is that in the first moments I did not approach. But a few years later, when the current director began to direct the choir, Master Osvaldo Manzanelli, I started to listen to him a couple of times, in the 1990s, and then I did realize that in that group I could be interested in singing, because I found it different. ”

Tulio had to train to learn to handle the Braille systemwhich is the system with which the blind are handled for text reading, music and numbers.

“I had to learn despite the fact that I, for the level of visual disability that I have, I can perfectly read a score. The learning of the Braille system was the opening to a way of working that is very useful. Thanks to that, Not only sing but I am Choir Head of the Choir.”

Of those times, Tulio recalls that in 1996 there was a contest that coincided with an era of his need for labor and personal changes. “We approached with the choir, it was something mutual,” he evokes.

After presenting, he entered the national polyphonic choir of blind Carlos Larrimbe. “The truth, I always felt verybecause I grabbed the Manzanelli stage, where the choir acquired a lot of repertoire, of different difficulties, and I never felt the need to go sing to another choir. ”

Among his biggest memories, he says that in 2003, after much effort, they made on the stage of the Teatro Colón Chichester Psalmsa work by Leonard Bernstein: “It had been preparing for a long time and it was a very particular sense of emotion to do it.”

“The difference that may be between a blind person and a seer who make music is access to tools. The more access to them, the differences are shrinking, ”reveals Cristian Alderete. And remember what the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities says: differences have to do with those difficulties of space or environment that prevent people from developing.

“In our case, the difficulties disappear when there is a score in Braille, when the building has signs, when people are open to interact,” he describes.

Therefore, the work carried out by copyists in these organisms is vital. Sandra Günther (51) is in charge of this work, which consists of transcribing each of the scores that will be executed to the Braille system for the members of the National Polyphonic Choir of Blind.

“I am a copyist in the choir 28 years ago. The work is as a team, that is to say that each one has their role and fulfills a step, ”he explains.

Sandra says that the process begins since they access the score in ink: the dictator dictates, a draft is made and then the matrix, that the copyists pass, who make the amounts that are missing. Then, another person makes a review, another combines him and ties them and the booklet for the coreuta comes out.

“Access to musicography for blind artists was always very difficult”reveals Sandra.

“To study music in a conservatory, they had to go to relatives who learned the Braille system or dictated the scores in ink. So, That the choir has a group of copyists makes work professional very important Because, if not, they are obliged to sing as an ear. That would prevent music from a score like any professional musician, ”he adds.

His story with Braille was born when she He losing his eyes And after finishing high school, he reached a rehabilitation center where he learned the system.

“It fascinated me as a system of signs, codes, for the intelligence that Braille had to produce, from common reading, how to build the materials and systematize the code to read it… in fact, later, after I did teachers in special education because I wanted to teach Braille”Sandra says.

When he knew the existence of the choir and the need for this practice for the choreuts that integrate it, he knew that he could become a rented and stable work at 22 years. He studied musicography, helped because he has a rest of the vision that allowed him to read the scores in ink, with magnifying glass and with optical aids and thus be able to transcribe them.

And about inclusion in art, he recalls a concert in the year 2000 in which all organisms participated in the esplanade of what was ATC, with the national polyphonic choir, the National Symphonic Band, the National Polyphonic Choir of blind, the National Blind Symphony Band of the Blind and the Philharmonic of Buenos Aires.

“That night, with fireworks, he closed singing the Handel Hallelujah. That was inclusion! Being part of such a great artistic expression, the truth that I remember today and I still get excited, ”he concludes.