Sara Serpa & Emmanuel Iduma – Intimate Strangers (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sara Serpa & Emmanuel Iduma – Intimate Strangers (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:45 minutes | 993 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Biophilia Records

A collaboration between Portuguese vocalist-composer Sara Serpa and Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma, drawing inspiration from Iduma’s latest book, A Stranger’s Pose, a unique blend of travelogue, musings and poetry, with a foreword by Teju Cole. In a combination of music, text, image and field recordings collected by Iduma during his travels, Intimate Strangers explores such themes as of movement, home, grief, absence and desire in what Iduma calls “an atlas of a borderless world”.

Intimate Strangers, which premiered in 2018 as a John Zorn Commission at National Sawdust, is an interdisciplinary musical performance that portrays writer Emmanuel Iduma’s travels in several African countries.

Taking Nigeria as a point of departure, it describes several encounters the writer has along his journey from Lagos to Sarajevo along the coast. The journey takes unexpected turns, resulting in reflections on the sea, the desert as well as natural and artificial borders he is faced with. There is beauty in these encounters, even when they describe love and loss, grief and longing, displacement and war, privilege or apathy.

While Emmanuel represents himself, Sara Serpa along with the voices of Sofía Rei and Aubrey Johnson are simultaneously narrators, storytellers and spirits that travel along, opening several emotional doors through the piece. With music composed by Serpa, it features also Qasim Naqvi on modular synth and pianist Matt Mitchell.

Tracklist:
01. Sara Serpa – First Song (03:12)
02. Sara Serpa – Lokoja: Okenne (05:21)
03. Sara Serpa – How Do You Know Where to Go? (05:21)
04. Sara Serpa – Bamako (02:30)
05. Sara Serpa – Lejam (05:02)
06. Sara Serpa – The Poet (feat. Onesiphore Nembe) (03:40)
07. Sara Serpa – God’s Time (05:03)
08. Sara Serpa – Kidira (03:00)
09. Sara Serpa – Le Bout Du Monde (03:47)
10. Sara Serpa – Note to Nephew (02:00)
11. Sara Serpa – In Due Course (04:23)
12. Sara Serpa – Night (03:23)
13. Sara Serpa – For You I Must Become a Tree (03:58)

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