Customer Reviews

In What Language

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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.

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.

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.

This recording cannot be dismissed as a "rap" record. In fact, it is more in the tradition of jazz and poetry collaberations pioneered by Charles Mingus--his Scenes in the City, the Clown, Freedom, Don't Let It Happen Here, and Weary Blues. The heart of the recording is, however, not the words, but the music of Vijay Iyer, whose composition and playing here can only be described as brilliant. This record is proof that there are still innovators in jazz.

Another incredible album put out by that awesome jazz record label "Pi Recordings". Contemporary yet timeless, "In What Language" speaks of the cornucopia of heartfelt emotion in an all inclusive universe of dissenting voices.

The cool, and unassuming, thing about "In What Language?" is that on paper it looks like a jazz-meets-hip-hop experiment along the lines of "Jazzmatazz" or Buckshot LeFonque. But a majority of this album doesn't neatly fit into either category. Elements of jazz are there, yes, and there is enough rapping and spoken word passages to give you the impression of hip-hop. But Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd have made something more than just that. It's weirder, highly original.

And I really don't know how to recommend it through the written word. "In What Language?" has undertones of post-9/11 paranoia, which can really be a downer. "Iraqi Businessman" gets the skin crawling even more with talk of torture (if I'm wrong on this one, please comment so that my mind can rest). Songs like "Asylum" alternate between midair-hanging passages and ominous piano, just understating the description of some woman left for dead.

I've heard Vijay Iyer's "Reimagining" and I like it, but it doesn't really prepare me for this. This is some heavy stuff.

Inspired by a pre-9/11 incident in which Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was wrongly detained by INS officials at JFK airport in New York and eventually deported without cause, "In What Language" explores the myriad experiences of fellow "brown-skinned" travelers negotiating the new international playing field that is the contemporary airport.

Underground Hip-Hop / Spoken-Word artist Mike Ladd teams up with visionary Jazz pianist Vijay Iyer to deliver an iconic song cycle of lives in transit, with international airports as the staging area for these multiple perspective, first-person tales of arrival and departure.

With seven instrumentalists at his disposal, Iyer weaves an intricate combination of color and texture into Ladd's spoken word meditations. Numerous guest vocalists represent various perspectives found within these tales of transition, veering from the mournful to the angry. An Indian porn shop owner, a Yemini lottery booth attendant, an Iraqi businessman, a refugee from Sierra Leone and even the airport's Jamaican X-Ray machine operator among others contribute complex and multilayered elucidations of their situations. Each of these tales is bolstered by a rotating roster of musicians with accompaniments that vary from atmospheric to agitated. An iconoclastic blend of Hip-Hop breakbeats, ambient electronics, minimal but harmonically complex piano chord voicings, swinging upright bass vamps and kaleidoscopic Jazz improvisations from sax and trumpet all combine to reveal an organic, innovative new sound.

Not quite spoken word, Hip-Hop or Jazz, but an invigorating mix of all three, "In What Language" addresses our modern society in all its imperfection. Comparable to the work of Steve Reich on "Different Trains" and some of Laurie Anderson's more complex narrative pieces, Ladd and Iyer have created a modern Opera of sorts, one whose thematic concepts are painfully representative of the world we live in. Our world is not color-blind, and may never be, but at least there are artists who have the foresight to challenge the status quo. A fascinating release and definitely, in the immortal words of Duke Ellington ... "beyond category."