In Venezuela, music eases pain of kids with cancer

CARACAS: Nine-year-old Victoria Alzuru looks earnest and determined and happy as she practices her violin before undergoing chemotherapy.

The girl pulls the bow across the strings and makes music -- anxiety-relieving music -- before she goes in for another session of treatment that has already cost her an ovary.

"It makes her forget everything," says her 43-year-old mother Lourdes, who brings Victoria to a children's hospital in Caracas every two weeks from their home in Los Teques in the northern state of Miranda.

The music lessons are a treat from an award-winning music program called the National System of Children's and Youth Orchestras. In Venezuela, people just call it "El Sistema."

It has been around for decades, working to rescue children from poverty and street crime through music education.

And in recent years it has expanded into hospitals, detention centers, shelters and remote settlements for indigenous people.

In downtown Caracas, the state-run Hospital JM de los Rios is the first to go musical with El Sistema.

Children receive classes while they are hospitalized or undergoing chemotherapy. They attend concerts or are lent instruments to play during their long periods of convalescence.

"Children learn very fast, especially those that are hospitalized, because they are here all day and have nothing else to do: they can just pass the time or they can learn something," said Marlon Franco, a musician and driving force behind the program.

Victoria's face is pallid. She wears a colorful cap to hide her hair loss. She giggles as she plays the violin, and is part of a quartet with other kids who play the maracas, the mandolin and a 'cuatro,' a Venezuelan stringed instrument for playing folk music.

"I also want to learn to sing," Victoria tells one of her teachers.