From Venezuelan composer, the sounds of liberty
VENEZUELAN COMPOSER MAKES A LIFE IN CONNECTICUT
“IF MUSIC MAKES YOU FEEL RELAXED OR AGGRESSIVE, THAT AFFECTS THE POLITICAL TONE.”
Venezuelan Icli Zitella speaks Italian with the doorman, Spanish with the Latin Americans and English with the Greeks and Romanians who live in his building.
“It’s like the United Nations,” he says.
Zitella has lived in the United States since 2012, when he came with his wife and son. She was studying to become a social sciences professor, and now has a post at New York University. He is a composer who teaches violin and piano.
Since moving to Greenwich, he has started singing for the First Presbyterian Church. Last year, he organized a benefit concert at the Greenwich YMCA, a night of Venezuelan art, musical performances and food that raised funds for humanitarian relief in Venezuela.
“I think the people here are open,” he said.
Zitella is one of 10 immigrants, from Cambodia to Syria, represented in an upcoming Greenwich Historical Society exhibit, “An American Story: Finding Home in Fairfield County.” On view from Oct. 2 to Jan. 6, the exhibit was first organized by the Fairfield Museum and History Center and Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, and then brought to Greenwich, where the historical society added accounts from 12 local immigrants.
Venezuela is imploding, and conditions harken back to when it fought for independence from Spain, Zitella says. Ten percent of its residents have fled or are fleeing the country.
Among Zitella, his wife and son, they have been granted six different temporary visas since coming seven years ago. Most recently, he obtained the 01 visa, which required him to demonstrate his entire composing career from 1992 to today, and supply 10 letters of recommendations from composers, conductors and musicians.
Zitella is nervous about the new immigration laws coming in October. He is applying for a green card, and in September, received a letter from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service requesting more evidence to process his case.
It has been hard for him to learn English, but Zitella said he is happy in the U.S., which he said is attractive to immigrants because of people’s freedom to associate, and it is governed by the rule of law — and not theocrats or dictators.
A lifelong student of music, he also studied philosophy in college. He mostly read about aesthetics, but once conditions worsened in Venezuela, began asking different questions: What are the fundamentals of political power? Why does Venezuela government oppose the people? Why can’t the people take back their political power from the leaders who have siezed it?
That is when he encountered the documents from the American founding. Reading Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, “Common Sense,” he felt like every word was meant for him. “It was like love at first sight,” he said.
He read Locke, a Scottish thinker and premier in the Scottish Enlightenment, a movement that influenced the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the literature at the time.
“All men are created equal,” he said, quoting the Declaration. “Not all Americans are created equal. That is incredible — they think not in terms of heritage, but in terms of how you can do things for others. You can be a good American if you offer something to others.”
Zitella offers music. A musician, composer, teacher and appreciator, he sees the power of music from all its angles.
A latecomer to piano and violin — he started playing keyboard at 11 and violin at 12 — he flourished thanks to his country’s education system and appreciation of the arts. Although small country, Venezuela has a system of 300 orchestras.
For 20 years, he played for the National Philharmonic Orchestra, and served as professor of Theory at MozarteumCaracas School of Music.
But his true love is composing, and he uses the piano to compose and check musical ideas. One piece, influenced by the pamphlet he read by Paine, is called “Common Sense,” and was played by the University of Reno, Nevada.
As a teacher, Zitella sees music as a tool to help people be better citizens.
In “The Republic,” Plato writes that music can affect the political environment, Zitella said. Plato’s ideal state included music education because it forms the soul — but he only allowed the music styles that promote courageous, harmonious lives.
“If music makes you feel relaxed or aggressive, that affects the political tone,” Zitella said. “But this is terrible because a lot of dictatorships use that to manipulate the free creation of art.”
Zitella’s appreciation for beauty and tradition keeps him from totally embracing contemporary aesthetics, which rely in part on shock value and breaking with tradition.
This kind of art is meant for an elite group of people, he said, whereas he composes music for common people. The esoteric meanings in contemporary art are rooted in an ideology that some people are better than others, he said.
“This is not true,” he said. “Normal people can offer you things.”