Sociable Musicopoetics in Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd’s In What Language

Abstract

Through an extended analysis of an excerpt from Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd’s In What Language, this essay engages with the ongoing deepening of the theory of improvised interactivity. Few studies within music research have considered the rich body of works combining music and poetry in improvising contexts. This article advocates for listening to Iyer and Ladd’s co-created work through the lens of sociable musicopoetics, an analytical stance that hears the interactivity in their creative processes. Through analysis and interviews, this article suggests that the sociable musicopoetics framework helps work against the restrictive binaries of music/language and composition/improvisation and enriches the understanding of improvised music and poetry combinations by highlighting the meaningfulness of interaction itself.