Sara Serpa: Recognition: Music For a Silent Film
Biophilia Records

Recognition: Music For a Silent Film exists as both an audio recording and as a multi-disciplinary work combining music and film. In its purely aural form, the material engages for weaving vocals, Zeena Parkins' harp, David Virelles' piano, and Mark Turner's tenor saxophone into twelve arresting pieces; experienced in its multi-dimensional capacity, the project imparts a heavier sense of thematic purpose, given its focus on the historical legacy of Portuguese colonialism in Africa. To create the visual material, Sara Serpa, a Lisbon, Portugal native and NYC-based vocalist-composer, and editor Bruno Soares transformed Super 8 archival footage into a silent film designed to be partnered with the music featured on the recording. Certainly the issues explored—occupation, slave trade, oppression, racism, segregation, violence, etc.—are timely. For Serpa, a key motivation for the work originated out of the desire “to break the silence about Portuguese colonialism and institutional racism.”

Musically, the participants concoct a magical, seductive sound space where crystalline harp, wordless vocalizing, tenor sax, and piano blend. With four elements only in play, the music breathes expansively, space deployed to maximum effect. At some moments, instruments voice melodies in unison, whereas in others soloing appears, such as when Turner and Serpa engage in a gently breezy pas de deux during “Occupation.” Sounds come together in different combinations—voice, sax, and piano interlock into mathematical patterns for “Propaganda,” for instance, before Virelles splinters off into another galaxy; all are present in some passages and smaller units elsewhere, the result a continually compelling presentation. One of the primary takeaways has to do with the even balance achieved by the four, and the generally relaxed feel emerges even more noticeably in three improvised tracks interspersed amongst the twelve.

Serpa's smooth, mellifluous delivery enhances the performances, and her partners impress as both distinguished ensemble participants and improvisors. The jazz inclinations of Turner and Virelles emerge in moments where solo expression is granted, a case in point “‘Civilizing Influence,'” which features the two in a breathy ballad duet; Parkins likewise contributes much to the sound world, not only with harp but tuning forks. Whereas many pieces present Serpa vocalizing wordlessly, “Beautiful Gardens” features her speaking voice (staggered into overlapping formation) recounting scenes that offset the image of the titular gardens with others describing colonial violence and torture. For the closing “Unity and Struggle,” Serpa sets words of inspiration by Amílcar Cabral, a key figure of African anti-colonial resistance, to a brooding soundtrack that sees her voice slithering, snake-like, through the dark waters of her partners.

The film version begins by intercutting archival video of sunflowers and bees with text by Cabral. In “Occupation,” historical footage of trains and planes is boldly colourized and subjected to geometric treatments, the subject matter connotative of invasion, exploitation, and colonization. Subsequent parts see similar effects applied—images of workers multiplied into a grid-like display, bullfighting footage treated to fractured, Warhol-like manipulations—though never so completely that the impact of the visuals is negated. Images repeatedly address the way Portugal's fascist regime used propaganda in its occupation of African nations.

As effective as the recording is as a standalone, the project's fullest realization combines the two parts; those who witnessed the silent film accompanied by live music in 2017 obviously had the best of both worlds, even if the recording as a physical artifact that could be returned to wasn't then available; the film content also naturally encourages a stronger personal reflection on the project's thematic issues than does the recording. Serpa's star has been ascending of late, as shown by her ‘Rising Star - Female Vocalist 2019' nod in Downbeat's critics poll, and her ambitious tenth album should only help to add to that, well, recognition. It certainly argues powerfully in support of her gifts as a vocalist, composer, and conceptualist.

June 2020