JAZZIZ Travel is a new podcast series hosted by JAZZIZ online editor Matt Micucci that explores jazz and creative music in all four corners of the globe. In this series, you will hear conversations with artists and people talking about the significance of jazz as an art form, the influence of folk music traditions of different cultures and backgrounds, or simply sharing their thoughts, ideas and insight on their multicultural projects.
Sara Serpa is a singer/composer/improviser who, through her practice and performance, explores the use of the voice as an instrument. She was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and moved to New York in 2008, where she resides to this day, and where she creates ethereal music drawing from a broad variety of inspirations, including literature, film and visual arts, as well as history and nature. Her new album, Intimate Strangers, documents her collaborative performance with Nigerian author Emmanuel Iduma, commissioned by John Zorn.
Much of it revolves around Iduma’s stories and stories of others that he collected in his book, A Stranger’s Pose, and deals with such themes as migration and displacement. It also continues a narrative that Serpa began in 2020 with Recognition: Music For a Silent Film. While that album grappled with the legacy of Portuguese colonialism in Africa via her own family’s history, Intimate Strangers gazes back at colonial powers from the vantage point of Africa itself.
Listen to our JAZZIZ Travel podcast conversation with Sara Serpa via the player below. Intimate Strangers will be released on December 3 via Biophilia Records and you can pre-order it HERE.
Featured photo by Ebru Yildiz.
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