Voices from the world

Giuseppina Casarin, a 65-year-old Venetian, is the founder and director of the Voci dal mondo choir, an opportunity – as she says – for cultures to meet, involving Italian citizens together with people of other nationalities, who have come to Italy from different countries.
«The choir has always questioned the need to exist in a city: it means questioning the issues of coexistence and we have looked for the right way to speak and sing to the city and get to know it. Meeting these new friends for us also meant discovering that in our community there is a new background sound». Bringing to light, or rather to the voice, experiences, stories, lives through music.

One of the choir's latest projects is called Sing for me and takes place in Venice and in the municipality of Milan. «The project – says Giuseppina – consists of going to meet the asylum seekers who live in the apartments managed by the Villaggio Globale cooperative. It is a way to get to know this reality that we know exists, but know little about. This opens up an opportunity for the citizens of Mestre and Milan to meet with the people hosted in these reception centers; singing is a strong bridge and we have discovered that the songs that these kids bring to the workshop are beautiful and retain a strong way of being together with music: singing and listening to others singing».

Last spring, Giuseppina Casarin's experience received recognition from the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, through the honor of Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic «for facilitating, through singing, relationships between people belonging to different cultures». She herself declared: «I, who lead this workshop, try to understand what is the real opportunity that a person who is starting to integrate into a community may need, what is the easiest way to meet others and how music and singing can facilitate this medium and this meeting».
This story teaches me that music and singing, in order to exist, presuppose someone who listens to them and that it is precisely from listening that we must start again to create new harmonies.

Roberto Lerda
NP December 2024