Portuguese Jazz Singer Sara Serpa Releases ‘Mobile’
Sara Serpa (Photo: Serpa Myspace)
Sara Serpa’s new CD “Mobile” is an album about wanderlust.
Serpa studied classical piano and jazz singing in her native Lisbon. She came to the US to study at the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory in Boston.
Soon after graduation, Serpa landed a gig at the Village Vanguard, one of New York’s most iconic jazz clubs. She was grateful for the experience, which connected her with the New York jazz scene.
But as a newcomer to New York, it’s easy to feel lonely and stressed out.
A year after her move to the city, she realized that she’d been craving travel literature, perhaps to cope with the feeling that she did not completely feel at home in New York. She was attracted to stories by lonesome people who had abandoned their native lands to discover the world.
Her album “Mobile” is an illustration of those readings. Each tune takes the listener in a different destination.
One song, “Sequoia Gigantis” is inspired by John Steinbeck’s trip to California’s redwood forests, as told in his book “Travels with Charley.” Another, “Traveling with Kapuściński,” came from a book by Polish journalist Riszard Kapuściński about Africa.
She also wrote songs about classic literary heroes, from Ulysses to Captain Ahab. And there’s even a tune about an Italian comic book hero, “Corto Maltese,” a lonesome and mysterious sailor, who never looks back as he travels the vast seas.
But Sara Serpa narrates her stories differently than most singers. She prefers to go wordless, with vocalizes, and scat. Her quintet aims to create musical scenes and atmospheres, with Serpa’s voice as just another instrument in the band.
The only tune on the CD that Serpa didn’t compose is a love song: “Sem Razão” or “Without Reason.” It was made famous by the late queen of Fado, singer Amalia Rodrigues. Fado is Portugal’s version of the blues, a pillar of the nation’s musical culture, but Serpa didn’t listen to much of it growing up. After she’d moved to the US, people kept asking her whether she sang Fado, so she eventually began doing some research.
She found out the best way to study Fado was to listen to old records by Amalia Rodrigues. The song “Sem Razão” stuck in her mind. She took its melody and wrote her own jazz quintet arrangements for it.
So, like many before her, Serpa dug into her own culture once she’d left home.
In her hands, the Fado classic “Sem Razão” morphed into a new jazz song.
Watch the official video of Serpa’s City of Light, City of Darkness:
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