Alliance’s ‘Basura,’ with songs by Gloria and Emily Estefan, honors healing power of music 

When Gloria Estefan was making Father of the Bride in the Atlanta area in 2021, she’d walk the Beltline during off hours and fell in love with the area. So when the producers of her new musical, Basura, were looking for a place to launch, she rooted for Atlanta and is delighted to be back.

Estefan and her daughter Emily are writing the music and lyrics for the production, making its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre May 30 through July 12. It’s based on the true story of Paraguay’s Recycled Orchestra, whose young members — inspired by a music teacher — turned scrap into musical instruments and became world famous. 

A music legend and multiple Grammy Award winner, Estefan has been involved in the project since 2019, when producer Michael Shulman asked for a meeting in Miami. While she was keen on working on the musical, she was intimidated after agreeing. 

“I said yes and then went home and panicked because I was thinking — 25 songs! — because you wind up throwing some stuff out,” she says. She also realized the landfill itself would be a central character.

Yet she threw herself into the project. “Like I always tell my kids, you’re not going to finish until you start. So that is what I did.”

She did ask Shulman if she could bring her daughter on board. “I thought she would be a great addition because she is an amazing musician. She plays everything. I’m her biggest fan, and I secretly just wanted to spend more time with her. I thought I would lure her with this proposal.”

An established musician in her own right, Emily Estefan was ecstatic to join. “It was an incredible opportunity, an incredible story, an incredible team,” she says. “We’ve had the privilege of not only learning about the real people that we are speaking about but collaborating in a musical way.”

The Basura score honors the Paraguayan music and culture, but it’s a unique sound, Emily says. She feels the collaboration with her mother exemplifies that. “It has the best of both our sounds,” she says. “Not only my mom’s musical vocabulary, melodies and lyrics — which may seem deliciously comforting in a way but [are] pushing the boundaries when it comes to authenticity — but also my rawness, rhythms, melodies and such. I feel we have melded the best of both worlds.”

According to Karen Zacarias, who is writing the book, the orchestra was formed in 2012 by Favio Chaves, a musician, engineer and former environmental technician who stumbled onto the idea and had to devise a way to make a violin made out of tin sound like a real violin. “[He was] a young man who loved playing music who was doing a job he felt he was failing at with environmental concerns at the landfill,” Zacarias says. “He started playing his violin and got the idea, ‘What if I taught music classes for free? Who will show up? What could happen?’ That became the spark.” 

The children in the orchestra dealt with economic and environmental hardships. Early on, Zacarias and the team realized that while the teacher character in the show would be a huge catalyst, the focus would instead be on a kid. From there, a story and songs emerged, but it was vital to create characters who felt distinct so audiences could feel the urgency in their life.

This is Gloria Estefan’s first musical since the success of her autobiographical show On Your Feet! Crafting music for a different project was a tall task. “It’s a challenge,” she says. “The songwriting I have done previously . . .  I write whatever I want, get inspired by whatever I feel at the moment. I don’t think you can write about what you don’t know to some degree emotionally. But [here] you’re writing for characters, for people — you are advancing the story. You have to combine the artistry of songwriting with storytelling, which sometimes is rare in pop music.”

Director Michael Greif, a five-time Tony nominee who directed Rent and Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway, knew the material sounded theatrical. “Some stories are made to be musicalized, and this kind of story — about the human spirit, beating all the odds and giving a bunch of kids a new lease on life — just seemed exactly like the material that is wonderful for a musical and for these composers,” he says. 

Zacarias lived in Atlanta twice before returning for this project.  Her father worked at Grady Memorial Hospital as a Mexican physician back in the 1970s. When her family returned many years later, she attended Henderson High School. “I am a product of Atlanta public schools, and I am so proud of it. It was some of the best years of our life. I still have so many friends here.” She remembers while her dad was working with the Centers for Disease Control, she’d be in her room listening to Gloria Estefan songs. “To be back now in my hometown [and] working with these two amazing women who represent this whole breadth of Latino music and culture is a dream come true.”

Although Gloria Estefan did not know the story beforehand, she did watch Landfill Harmonic, a 2015 documentary about the Recycled Orchestra, and it blew her away. “I know the power of music. Music has been a healing force in my life. Any tough moment I had to go through as a kid, what got me through was music, listening and singing to it. I would lock myself in my room and cry because my dad was ill, and I had to take care of him. I had to stay strong for my mom, and music was my only catharsis. I was immediately able to understand these kids and how the power of music transformed their community — and transformed them.” 

Where & When

Basura is at the Alliance Theatre May 30 through July 12. Tickets start at $55 and depend on time and seating.
1280 Peachtree St. NE.

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig.