In What Language

Mike Ladd, Vijay Iyer | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 21, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Pi Recordings
• ASIN: B0000CG8FW
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #241,248 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

No description available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Rating:
Release Date: 0000-00-00
Media Type: Compact Disk

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New music for a new age (but definitely not New Age music!), July 7, 2004

By 

John C. Lynch (Chapel Hill, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In What Language (Audio CD)

Some folks (or one person at least) have said some dumb things about this album, so I want to clear up a couple of things right off the bat: 1) If you hate spoken words (as opposed to sung words) in combination with music (which is like saying, "if you hate saxophones, categorically"), you might not like this disk, but to write this album off as "rap" or "hip-hop" is stunningly ignorant.
2) It has also been suggested that this album basically amounts to whining about inconsequentials in the face of the true horror of 9/11. By this logic, due to the enormity and injustice of 9/11, no one should point out or complain about any other injustices in the world, ever. Well, that's just dumb too.

So what do I think about this album? It's brilliant. And it works on so many levels. To start with, the music is like nothing else you've ever heard. Even though many of the tracks are in odd time signatures, it's music that makes you tap your foot if not just get up and move your body (which is true of most of the music Vijay Iyer writes). On this album even more his others, Vijay seems to delight in creating dense polyrhythmic patterns with just a few notes or just a couple chords, which lends itself very well to the sparse melodies and ambiant harmonics that create the base for the spoken word artists. But there's some serious blowing on this album as well, with fine solos from Vijay, Libertry Ellman and Rudresh Mahanthappa (not to mention killer drums from Trevor Holder that constantly dice up the odd time signatures and still sound seriously funky). And the album also works as an integration of "spoken word"/"rap" and "jazz", an accomplishment that many a fine artist have tried to do and failed miserably. Part of why it works so well is that many of the pieces are less like "rap" and more like recited poetry to music. It's not that the spoken parts don't have the rhytmic delivery of rap. It's more like the artists involved figured out that if you're going to mix "jazz" and "rap", it shouldn't sound like Chuck D is sitting in with MJQ (though
I suspect that that would be an interesting listen). Both forms are changed by they're mixing, and changed into something that is therefore no longer categorizable in either of the original forms. It's really beautiful.

Now as for the lyrics, which is another level on which this album works. The lyrics are not about ""people of color" having trouble at airports following 9/11" (which is dumb thing number three that was said about this album, for those of you counting at home). True, Mike Ladd addresses some of the more unfortunate, to put it mildly, effects of a John Ashcroft as enforcer-in-chief world. But the thematic material for this album is so much broader and more interesting than just that. The songs explore the new geography of a world where borders are being fortified and broken down simultaneously, and the international airport as a symbol for both human connections and economic disparity and discrimination.
It could and should be required reading/listening for introductory courses on "globalization". But this album is far from being some over-reaching "high-concept album"; it is smart, but it's also really cool to listen to and absorb as just really good music.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must listen, March 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: In What Language (Audio CD)

This is something completely new and different - something you don't encounter often enough in jazz. Many have called In What Language a song cycle - and it's exactly that. Think of it as akin to Britten's Winterreise or Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde -a collection of songs each related to a topic - in this case, the heightened alienation of the post-9/11 world. Mike Ladd's poetry is written in the voice of 17 different people of color - It's filled with the kind of cultural detail that comes from full anthropological immersion. It will make you laugh with recognition and cry at the tragedy. It's performed with power by four different actors who really make the stories come to life. Supporting this is the music of Vijay Iyer, one of the most imaginative composers on the jazz scene today. His music runs the gamut, alternately funky, jazzy, melodic, hypnotic - always mesmerizing. And it's improvised jazz to boot, with excellent solos that fit seamlessly into the flow. The result is a perfect melding of music with spoken word. The CD is genre shattering and pushes the boundaries of jazz in a whole new direction. It's a must listen.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Song Cycle, April 18, 2004

By 

John Midgley (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In What Language (Audio CD)

This is a wonderful work of art. Duke Ellington said that much great music is "beyond category" and that is true of this release. It's a song cycle about travel, globalization, the treatment of people of color in zones of interaction such as airports, and the many scrambled cultures that make up the shrinking world we live in. It is artistically political and politically artistic, literate, layered and nuanced. It draws from many forms - jazz, hip-hop, beat(nik) poetry, classical influences. The musicians and vocalists are both women and men and come from multiple ethnic backgrounds, and this also informs the complex texture of the whole. Mike Ladd's trenchant lyrics could stand alone as well crafted poetry (they are included in a booklet), but the words are even better as recited by Ladd and others with the music. Vijay Iyer's excellent and often beautiful music provides a compelling context, ever-changing to meet what the lyrics are communicating and providing dramatic tension. The songs cover a vast emotional range and suggest how the world looks from many points of view. Iyer and Ladd say in the liner notes that it is their "attempt to make sense of the tumultuous world around us." Sense or not, they have grasped the essence of that world and somehow gotten it onto this disc through the magic of their words and music.