A St. Louis music teacher who grew up near Caracas is turning a Thursday night show into a lifeline for the corner of Venezuela where he was raised. Julio Prato has organized a four-band benefit concert at Off Broadway on August 13, with all proceeds going directly to earthquake relief efforts in the Caracas and La Guaira area, the region hit hardest by twin quakes that struck in June.
Prato, who has lived in St. Louis since 2012, is originally from the part of Venezuela devastated by the disaster, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He moved to the area to study music performance at Lindenwood University in nearby St. Charles, a path documented by New Music Circle. Since then he has built a life in St. Louis as a performer and teacher, while also founding and editing The St. Louis Music Report, an independent publication covering local indie artists and DIY concert events.
The scale of what prompted Prato to act is staggering. On June 24, two earthquakes measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck north-central Venezuela seconds apart, causing widespread structural collapse and more than 6,300 reported fatalities as of August, according to Wikipedia's account of the disaster. Per the U.S. Geological Survey, the quakes ruptured roughly 175 kilometers of the San Sebastián fault system, making it the most destructive seismic event in northern Venezuela since the 1967 Caracas earthquake.
Why La Guaira Bore the Brunt
The coastal state of La Guaira served as the epicenter of the destruction, where roughly 80% of buildings and commercial structures suffered severe damage or total collapse, according to Oxfam International. That statistic echoes the seed story's own figure that 80% of businesses in La Guaira were damaged. The devastation landed on top of an already fragile situation: an estimated 7.9 million people across Venezuela were in need of humanitarian assistance even before the quakes struck, Oxfam reports, a burden that has only compounded the difficulty of recovery as basic utilities collapsed.
Money raised at Off Broadway will go to the nonprofit started by Diego Vega, identified in other reporting as Diego Vega Mata, who founded the grassroots initiative Ayudanditoo in La Guaira to deliver food, clean drinking water, and basic rescue tools directly to survivors, according to A Type of Amigo. The model mirrors how larger fundraising efforts have operated since the disaster; a GoFundMe campaign run by UWC Venezuela Alumni allocated 35% of its initial relief proceeds directly to Ayudanditoo in La Guaira alongside established national groups like Cáritas Venezuela, in order to get aid to local ground units.
Four Bands, One Night, $20 at the Door
The benefit will feature four acts at the 500-capacity Off Broadway, a longtime independent live music club operating out of a converted brick garage in St. Louis's Historic Cherokee-Lemp District since the mid-1980s. Prato's own project, Piracy, described as a post-punk art-rock band, will share the bill with his other group, Julio Cesar Ensemble, which performs songs in both English and Spanish and will offer an acoustic patio show featuring the cuatro, a small four-stringed acoustic instrument derived from 16th-century Spanish guitars and widely recognized as Venezuela's national instrument.
Rounding out the lineup are punk-rock band Little Big Big Bangs, young solo indie-rock act Good Man, and Dour, an electronic music producer's project; Gold Mold and Kids are also slated to perform. Entry is $20, and donations will be collected throughout the night. Prato has said he plans to speak to the crowd about the Venezuela earthquake crisis throughout the evening, framing the show as an effort to bring the St. Louis community together and raise awareness alongside the fundraising itself.
