Bolivian music has a message.

Byline: Tyler Bridges

Feb. 14--PORONGO, Bolivia -- When the string orchestra began to play beside the church altar and the youth choir joined in, it seemed as if they belonged in a European cathedral.

Instead, they were 30 children in shorts and sandals, and they were practicing baroque music in a simple adobe church in a remote tropical village without any paved roads.

Porongo is the 11th -- and most recent -- community in this region of eastern Bolivia to create a school of classical music for poor children who had never before picked up violins or had singing lessons.

Local officials say the music has given purpose and meaning to the lives of children who otherwise have few opportunities and has given the rural communities greater self-esteem.

But the nine-year-old effort is also helping to revive music written by the children's Indian ancestors, the Chiquitanos -- themselves taught by Jesuit priests who held sway around these parts until the Spanish Crown expelled them some 250 years ago.

That musical tradition had long died out when a young Bolivian conductor named Ruben Dario Suarez Arana was invited in 1996 to undertake a seemingly impossible task.