Ecuador To Host Concert Against Xenophobia in Quito

More than sixty young people from four countries will gather Thursday for the second edition of the "Concert without Borders" to fight against xenophobia and to raise funds to help migrants in situations of vulnerability, among them Venezuelans.

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Organizers of the concert consider that migration includes several facets and one of them is cultural exchange, "which calls people to articulate and take advantage of the virtues and skills that each one possesses."

For this reason, the Orquesta Joven del Ecuador, under the direction of the Brazilian teacher Diego Carneiro, will offer a concert at the Aleman School in Quito, in which they will also premiere the Children's Orchestra, the result of the integration program "Music as a Refuge."

"We offer a special repertoire, popular, classical, full of passion, full of integration," said Carniero about the concert in which music from composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Astor Piazzolla and Marc-Antoine Charpentier will be heard among others.

The concert will take place on the same day that Ecuador hosts the Second Contact Meeting on the situation in Venezuela, the so-called International Contact Group (ICG), composed of a dozen American countries and the European Union, after the first meeting February in Montevideo.

The event comes after a concert was held last December on the Ecuadorian-Colombian border with the participation of 45 musicians from Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil.

In December, musicians surprised exhausted Venezuelan migrants at the border who queued in long lines at migration to formalize their documents. Dozens who arrived to Ecuador in search of better living conditions in the country or as they made their way farther south of the continent, witnessed the young people’s concert in which humanitarian aid was also distributed.

At age 10, Venezuelan cellist Atzel Rodriguez was the youngest of the performers, and the eldest, his compatriot Alex Duran (30), played the cuatro, a typical guitar of Venezuela. They were mixed with the migrant crowd and joy broke out when llanera music and other rhythms began to play.

Organizers said the music acted "as a vehicle of love and hope for the people to continue their long and tiring journey."

"That's why we're musicians, we're here to feed people's souls, to give them joy," Carneiro said after that concert.