Nigerian Writer Emmanuel Iduma to Debut Album “Intimate Strangers” with Sara Serpa

Born in Akure, Nigeria in 1989, Emmanuel Iduma has always been on the move. He has described his childhood as moving from place to place, learning bits about the cities and towns he lived in for the short time he was there. As Iduma grew older, he took a liking to his father’s library and was the one to unpack and arrange the books each time they moved, becoming a family librarian of sorts. 

Iduma’s Influence

Fast forward nearly twenty years later, and Iduma couldn’t shake his love for literature. Despite being trained as a lawyer, he decided to fulfill his dream to write. With this in mind, he went to New York to attend an MFA in writing and art criticism from the New York School of Visual Arts. In 2018, he wrote a memoir, A Stranger’s Pose, recounting his travels across Nigeria. He presents the story in brief fragments, which seem to mimic the way he and his family moved around the country, not spending a long time in any one place.  

The young writer has more books on the way, including I Am Still With You, which covers the way Nigeria’s past also affected his family. Throughout the book, Iduma tries to solve a mystery, yet the people who knew the answers can no longer help him on his quest. 

Intimate Strangers

As readers wait for Iduma’s newest book release, he has wasted no time collaborating with other artists to create beautiful work that blurs the line between fiction and experience. He is the editor and co-founder of Saraba Magazine, which showcases upcoming Nigerian writers including visual artists such as Abraham Oghobase. 

He also works with artists in his own work, like the New York-based Portuguese singer and composer, Sara Serpa. The two came together to create a musical interpretation of Iduma’s literature, blending Iduma’s memoirs and poetry with Serpa’s music to create an immersive, audiovisual experience that depicts companions travelling through a world without borders. 

In what Iduma has referred to as “an atlas of a borderless world,” the artists attempt to imagine a world that has repaired itself from its past. As Serpa is from Portugal, a country that had taken advantage of the continent of Africa in the past, both she and Iduma dance between tension and understanding as they unpack the weight of the world’s current state. 

While there have been live performances of the piece, there is also a recorded version that has been released in the form of an album. The songs showcase jazz, spoken word, and storytelling to create an expansive arc that describes the tension between the artists themselves. 

Picked Up by Roulette

Intimate Strangers has been revered by several reputable institutions and publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, which have ranked the piece at number eight on the list of best jazz albums of 2021. The event has also been hosted in a number of venues and theatres, the Roulette among the most prestigious. 

The Roulette, formerly known as the Roulette Intermedium, proudly wears its name as a metaphor for the daring risks the center has taken. They took their name from the game of roulette, where players throw a ball on a moving wheel and bet on where it will land. Playing the game, much like the center’s search for bold, new talent, has its own art and strategy. 

One example is the Martingale System, a 19th-century system invented by John Henry Martingale, where players make small bets, doubling them to compensate for any losses. It’s an excellent bankroll management strategy that allows people to take risks responsibly, allowing players the best of both worlds. 

The Roulette arts center, taking from the 19th-century strategy, takes risks by hosting artists who are different from the norm, knowing that it could mean something great, like finding amazing new artists who aren’t afraid to break the mould. It appears they have had a great stroke of luck this time around with Intimate Strangers, which has touched on delicate historical topics and gracefully worked through that tension to create something beautiful.