Best of 2020 Lists:
The 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll
Downbeat Magazine Top-Rated Albums of 2020
Mulheres Que Causaram Ondas em 2020 – Rimas e Batidas
Featuring texts by Amílcar Cabral narrated by Angolan singer Aline Frazão, Recognition is an essay documentary directed by Portuguese vocalist-composer Sara Serpa, in collaboration with film director Bruno Soares. Using family archive footage from colonial Angola, Recognition takes as a point of departure, Portugal’s denial in confronting its dark colonial past. The material has been edited and transformed to create a sensory experience in which music and image are juxtaposed with texts by the revolutionary, Amílcar Cabral from Unity and Struggle, Luandino Vieira and Linda Heywood. The documentary explores the co-existence of two realities: one, verbally described by the colonized, and the other, filmed by the colonizer, proposing and imagining a new narrative, while inviting the viewer/listener to reflect on history in a visceral way.
The musical score features Sara Serpa (voice, composition) Zeena Parkins (harp) and Mark Turner (saxophone) and David Virelles (piano), probes deep into the emotional core of this era through scored material and flowing improvisation.
“An overtly political work about the Portuguese colonization of Angola, the program paired Serpa’s compositions with video from old Super-8 home movies of her grandfather made in Angola (…)” Donwbeat Magazine
“(…) a singular multimedia experience both spellbinding and haunting in nature. Recognition was truly beyond category.” All About Jazz
“The displaying of the footage, intercalated with texts by the revolutionary Amilcar Cabral, earned an extra-sensorial meaning with the emplacement of chants that ranged from sparkling to sufferable to propulsive, often creating moments of pure lyricism by themselves or falling in concurrent ostinatos with the other instruments.” Jazz Trail
“I’ve long loved the pristine, unswerving character of Sara’s voice, as well as her keen awareness of how it activates whatever space she’s singing in. But in her performance of Recognition at Winter Jazz Festival 2017, I watched her push past these qualities into exciting and unexpected territory: at times, the beam-like steadiness of her voice was overdriven to the point of fraying, while its usual ambience was focused into a bracing directness.
The contrast created by these new dimensions extended the emotional range of this brave and haunting new work, and helped me appreciate even more those initial vocal characteristics that I had been drawn to in the first place. Realized by a patient yet relentlessly creative ensemble featuring harpist Zeena Perkins and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, Sara’s composition tightened the timbral gaps between the three instruments while showcasing the airy complexity of each.
During kaleidoscopic passages of looping, hocketing rhythms, the attacks of notes were executed so consistently by all three members that it was often difficult to tell them apart. But those surprises immediately gave way to splashes of vibrant, acoustic color in the sustain. In particular, the way the piece highlighted the insidious psychological and social mindsets that allowed colonialism to persist has stuck with me.
It was an important reminder of all of our proximity to—and complicity in—the many injustices that plague our society today. In short: this is a fearless, exciting new work by an already remarkable artist pushing herself outside of her comfort zone from almost every angle.” Rafiq Bahtia , guitarist/ composer
“Recognition is an irreverent and poignant analysis of the place of memory and a complex piece that aims for a review of the Portuguese colonialism and its Africa occupation. It reveals itself in free tone, during the timeline of the projection, thanks to an exquisite video assemblage.
Using a grainy style of formal repetition, Recognition reveals Serpa’s detailed attention to the collection of the raw images portraying labor scenes. The film lives from the overlapping layers of visual content and layers of saturation, progressing along with the social narrative, in a gratifying sensorial experience to the viewer. The exploration of the multiplier effects of the subject transport us, step by step, into a captivating progression of music and spoken words.
With a wide range of sonic tools, and aiming for a sincere reflection on universal responsibility and social justice, Sara Serpa connects the past with the present, exposing the propaganda used by the Portugal’s fascist regime in its occupation of African nations.” Bruno Duarte, Art Director and Film Production Designer (Tabu (2012) , Diamantino (2018)
” With Recognition, Sara Serpa looks deeply into the problems of colonialism, occupation, racism, and exploitation that have left a scar on human history and continue to impact our world today. She bears witness through the lens of her grandfather’s films taken in Angola in the 1960s, near the end of Portugal’s four-century occupation.
These movies are a time capsule handed down to her through generations and across continents, showing images of African landscapes and local laborers as well as Portuguese tourists and military. Serpa has treated and edited these films into repeating segments with shifting colors, bodies morphing into geometric shapes, and the images become palpable, ironic, disturbing, yet beautiful. Interspersed are the texts of Amilcar Cabral, a revolutionary Pan-Africanist political leader and thinker of the era whose words drive to the core of the systematic injustices of colonialism, and are still relevant today.
Serpa’s vocalization ranges from fragile and subdued to direct and insistent, a call to the listener to wake up. Her compositions feature complex, yet spacious harmonies on the harp and piano strings, with the soft breath of the tenor saxophone weaving in between.
Serpa’s music is a compassionate embrace, expressing pain, melancholy, anger, and horror, while simultaneously offering the opportunity for renewal and collective healing. “Recognition” is not only a brilliant artistic work, but an important offering that I hope will be viewed by audiences worldwide.” Amir ElSaffar, trumpeter, vocalist, composer