In Cateura, a community that grew beside Asunción’s main landfill, children once dreamed of playing music but had almost no instruments to share. From that unlikely setting emerged the Cateura Recycled Instruments Orchestra, a story now reaching Broadway in a new musical featuring songs by Gloria Estefan.
A music school built on waste
In 2006, an environmental technician named Favio Chávez arrived at the Cateura landfill to work on a recycling project. In his spare time, he began offering music lessons to local children. The classes proved so popular that instruments quickly ran out. Rather than turn students away, Chávez enlisted Nicolás “Cola” Gómez, a waste-picker who had become a skilled luthier, to build new ones, from materials found in the dump.
Old water pipes became saxophones. Forks, spoons, and coins became the keys for other instruments. Craftsmen transformed oil tins into violins. From that improbable workshop, the Cateura Recycled Instruments Orchestra was born.
The community surrounding the landfill is home to around 2,500 families, many of whom survive by scavenging waste to resell. The neighbourhood has limited access to clean water, electricity, and sanitation. For the children there, the music school became something rare: a reason to stay in education and off the streets. Today, the programme offers free weekly classes to between 300 and 400 students.
How the Cateura Recycled Instruments Orchestra reached the world
The orchestra performs classical music, Paraguayan folk songs, the Beatles, and Frank Sinatra. The musicians play instruments built entirely from rubbish, carefully crafted to imitate violins, violas, cellos, double basses, guitars, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, and percussion.
A short film published online in 2012 brought the group to international attention and spread rapidly across social media. It paved the way for Landfill Harmonic, a full-length documentary released in 2015 and directed by Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley. The film won the Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival and later aired on HBO.
Invitations from abroad followed quickly. The orchestra performed alongside Stevie Wonder and the American rock bands Metallica and Megadeth. They played at the United Nations, for European monarchs, and for Pope Francis. Stages in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Japan, Palestine, and across Europe all followed. The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, permanently displays some of their recycled instruments.
Gorillaz, a visit and a song shared in Cateura
In 2018, the connection between the orchestra and the global music world deepened further. When the British virtual band Gorillaz visited Paraguay for the Asunciónico music festival in Asunción, frontman Damon Albarn went beyond the stage. He met the children of the orchestra in person, played alongside them, and sang together with them. According to local media reports, the encounter was unscripted and spontaneous.
The visit reflected a broader pattern: internationally recognised artists who discovered the orchestra’s story consistently sought direct contact with its members, rather than simply publicising their cause from a distance.
A musical built for Broadway
The next chapter in the orchestra’s story will unfold not in Paraguay but on a theatre stage in Atlanta, Georgia, before a planned move to Broadway in New York. Basura, the Spanish word for rubbish, is a new musical inspired by the true story of Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra. The musical will debut at the Coca-Cola Stage at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, where it will run from 30 May to 12 July 2026.
The music and lyrics are written by nine-time Grammy Award winner Gloria Estefan and her daughter, singer-songwriter Emily Estefan. The show is directed by Michael Greif, known for the Broadway productions Rent and Dear Evan Hansen. The book is by National Latino Playwriting Award-winner Karen Zacarías. Grammy and Tony Award winner Alex Lacamoire, the musical supervisor behind Hamilton and In the Heights, serves as orchestrator and arranger.
A blueprint beyond Paraguay’s borders
Similar orchestras inspired by the Cateura model have since been formed in Brazil, Burundi, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Spain. The project has become a recognised blueprint for using music as a social tool in marginalised communities around the world.
Back in Cateura, the landfill still receives over a thousand tonnes of waste each month. But on any given day, children are there learning to play instruments built from that same waste, and travelling the world to perform on them. As the orchestra’s own motto puts it: the world sends its rubbish to Cateura, and Cateura sends back music.
Those wishing to follow the orchestra’s work can find them on Instagram at as orquestadecateura. The world premiere of Basura: A New Musical opens in Atlanta in May 2026; follow at basuramusical for updates and tickets.
