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

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
02. Sara Serpa - Lokoja: Okenne
03. Sara Serpa - How Do You Know Where to Go?
04. Sara Serpa - Bamako
05. Sara Serpa - Lejam
06. Sara Serpa - The Poet (feat. Onesiphore Nembe)
07. Sara Serpa - God's Time
08. Sara Serpa - Kidira
09. Sara Serpa - Le Bout Du Monde
10. Sara Serpa - Note to Nephew
11. Sara Serpa - In Due Course
12. Sara Serpa - Night
13. Sara Serpa - For You I Must Become a Tree



Thanks to the Original customer.