This ground-breaking book examines the development of the Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín (the Network of Music Schools of Medellín), founded in Colombia’s second city in 1996 as a response to its reputation as the most dangerous city on Earth. Inspired by the Venezuelan program El Sistema, the Red is nonetheless markedly different: its history is one of multiple reinventions and a continual search to improve its music education and better realise its social goals. Based on a year of intensive fieldwork in Colombia and written by the author of El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth (2014), this volume offers fresh insights on the past, present, and future of Social Action Through Music and its evolution in both scholarship and practice.