This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful
2 min read
Suddenly Darth Vader climbs up onto a chair in front of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. Clad in all black, he swings his sword like a conductor’s baton while 200 musicians and volunteers, most in their early twenties, get ready. They unpack their instruments: violins, cellos, clarinets. Then the real conductor, Étienne Jarrier, steps up in a green shirt and the musicians of the Orchestre du Nouveau Monde (New World Orchestra) begin to play.
Their song is a poignant one — El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido (The People United Will Never Be Defeated), a Chilean protest song written in the 1970s by the composer and pianist Sergio Ortega and folk group Quilapayún. It has since become an international hymn of resistance, and the members of the Orchestre du Nouveau Monde chant its refrain again and again to support the student protests in France this October, voicing their solidarity with the half million young people who are protesting high living costs and deteriorating conditions in their schools.
“Music is a way for us to be heard,” says 25-year-old Jarrier, who co-founded the orchestra in 2022 “to find new ways forward.” A self-described “member of the climate generation,” the young man with the red-tinted black locks says he felt that climate activism had exhausted most avenues of protests and found it was time for “artivism,” art as a vehicle for political expression, “as a way of reaching people at the deepest level.”
The post How ‘Artivism’ Is Driving the Resistance in Paris appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
