Music

A better world

My name is Gaspar Hoyos. I'm a musician. Flutist. By chance of life I was born in the United States, but my family is from Colombia. I grew up in Bogotá and studied at the Refous School from 1977 to 1989, the year of my bachelor's degree.

The music thing didn't come into my life like that because it did. My parents, consummate music lovers, owned a beautiful disco of classical music, which I gradually took over. Hours and hours I spent listening to Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart and many other composers, and thus my love for “cultured” music grew, generating so many emotions in my soul and heart. My father took me as a child to listen to concerts in the concert hall of the Luis-Angel Arango Library, and to the Colón Theater in Bogotá, stages to which I would go years later to act as a solo flutist. That's how I fell in love with music.

I think I would never have been a professional musician had it not been for my family and Colegio Refous. Interested in showing everyone a rainbow of possibilities in life, Monsieur Jeangros did not hesitate to offer students at his school seemingly unusual activities. Each Refous student will remember the "vocations". Agriculture, weaving, cooking, ceramics ... without forgetting other activities such as music (instrument classes, choir, orchestra), carpentry, jewelry, kite contests, soccer and "championships" burned ”, excursions, physical education. Various aspects that are absolutely necessary in the life of a human being, and without which life would have fewer colors, fewer emotions, less meaning. Those activities changed our lives without us realizing it.

The spirit of Monsieur Jeangros (and the faithful support of my parents) allowed me to be a professional musician. In the Refous, music or drawing were no more or less important than mathematics or physics. That is very valuable. All areas were of equal importance to him and naturally to us as well. I never considered being a musician as a negligible or insignificant profession. On the contrary, being a musician is a great dream for a teenager. Having dreams, at any age, is also important. Being a musician is considered something completely out of the ordinary. That is forgetting that, just a little over a century ago, music was practiced in almost every home, after or before dinner, at parties and celebrations of all kinds. I started studying flute at school, and it went well for me. I made rapid progress and entered the conservatory of the National University. I fondly and nostalgically remember the pride with which Monsieur Jeangros listened to me when I played at school for the students. I had his support very early, and I know that he was always very proud of my achievements in the world of music.

Studying at the Refous allowed us to stop conforming to normal. He encouraged us to ask ourselves questions about the meaning of what we do, about our mission in life and in our profession. My path in music is that of many. I was winning - and trying to win - prizes in flute contests (in order to stand out), playing concerts and recitals in beautiful theaters around the world, recording records. Finally, I joined a French orchestra as leader of the flutes ... and a few years passed.

The questions - inherited from the Refous and my family education - emerged little by little. What is my mission as a musician? What can a musician bring to the world? How can we use music to make this world better? The answer emerges little by little: the human being before the musician.

Undoubtedly, the spirit of the Refous school encouraged this type of reflection. An education - oriented towards the complete human being, towards the well-being of all, towards the construction of a just and enlightened society for all, within humility and serious work - could not leave us indifferent.

This reflection took years to materialize for me, because, I consider, in music one has to pass the first stage in which one "imposes" oneself on the international music scene as an outstanding musician. That stage is colored by much narcissism and pride. You spend it busy trying to show others that you do your job well. Fortunately over the years, those nasty strokes turn into humility and appreciation. Then, only after humility and reflection, does altruism come. Altruism with a tool: my art, my trade, music.

For some years I have spent a lot of time playing for children, for the elderly, for people who have never heard classical music in their lives, and who discover it with joy, with emotions, with bright eyes, with smiles and with tears. I have also taught the flute to children from all walks of life. For some of them, music, flute lessons and the fact of being part of a healthy and peaceful community that works for a common goal has simply been salvation. Music and contact with human beings who make music have been for these children the way to forge themselves by having faith in life and in man, forgetting the horrors they have witnessed: violence, crime, hunger , poverty, scarcity, injustice, loneliness. The absence of poetry and dreams.

We artists are the barrier against horror. We are the magicians who can shake the world a little to get sparks of hope, or at least of joy - it does not matter that they are ephemeral. Our duty is to transport the music out of the enclosures consecrated to it. Take her to the streets, to schools, to hospitals and to the elderly.

So we can leave a better world.

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