#421: M.I.A., ‘Arular’
INTERSCOPE, 2005
M.I.A. is controversial. Her music is riddled with violent overtones, she keeps having visa issues everytime she does anything in the United States, she is outspoken about the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka and, on top of all that, she had the gall to wear a sheer top over her nine-months-pregnant belly when she performed at the 2009 Grammy’s with some of America’s biggest rappers: Jay Z, Ye, T.I. and Lil’ Wayne. American media elites called her a terrorist and dangerous.
Both her message and the packaging of her message bothered the West. People did not know what to make of this political refugee woman from Sri Lanka who was not leaning into the Katy Perry of it all and instead rejected pop culture in favor of activism.
M.I.A. included gunshots in her music to mirror the gunshots she heard growing up. She featured artists from countries like Liberia and India and platformed the kind of storytelling that centers as white settlers as villains. And most importantly, she used her lyrics to hold a mirror up to her listeners by quoting their common anti-immigrant rhetoric.
She came to the UK in 1985 with her mother and siblings at the age of nine. Her father stayed in Sri Lanka to continue serving as the founder of a nonviolent Tamil resistance group fighting the Singhalese government majority during the Tamil Genocide.
In her documentary, Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., she said, “I had to deal with the fact that I was something else and I was different and I was an immigrant. One day in Sri Lanka I was getting shot at for being a Tamil. Then I came to England I was getting spat at for being a Paki.”
Okay, I have a lot to say about M.I.A. She is kooky and brilliant. I don’t agree with a lot of her beliefs but I do think she is fearless and important. For the sake of word-count, I will hone into this album, Arular.
Her musical career effectively started with this album. And she would never have made this album if she hadn’t gone to Sri Lanka 2001 to make a film about her cousin who was literally M(issing) I(n) A(ction) because of the genocide which would last until 2009.
She needed music for her film so she wrote it herself. This is how the songs, Sunshowers and Galang came to be. This first mixed tape made its rounds throughout the electro-pop world and was the catalyst for her meeting Diplo, who at the time was an unknown DJ performing in London who frequently sampled Galang in his sets.
The two started dating and proceeded to work together on her first two albums. They widened each other’s social and musical circles to more diverse collaborators and created the song that would eventually win M.I.A. both a Grammy and an Oscar, Paper Planes (on her second album, Kala).
When Arular was released, record stores refused to carry the CD because they didn’t know which shelf to place it on. A keen listener can hear the influence of Public Enemy, Bow Wow Wow, Ultramagnetic MC’s and even The Clash throughout this album. It’s not necessarily world music, hip hop, electro pop, or indie.
Because of the music industry’s general malaise in trying to sell the album, M.I.A. credits Napster and other illegal music downloading software for helping Arular blow up. The album spread quickly and drew the attention of American hip hop artists and producers around the world.
She named the album after her father and said, after its release, “If I represent anything, it’s what it’s like to be a civilian caught up in a war.”
It seems that her intention in music was never to be liked or popular, it was to represent a very untold and basically taboo experience. If you listen closely beyond the ear candy bells and whistles in her music, you will hear these heartbreaking stories.
She is not reflecting sentiments unique to 2005. These anti-immigration fears are alive and well today. A friend reposted this on instagram recently from a Colorado State Rep named @leslieherod about new anti-immigrant signs that are cropping up in Denver.
As a society, we are still actively criminalizing people who suffer. It is as if we want to punish people for successfully escaping the horrors of their birth country and then punish them again for trying to find safety in a new country.
Top songs: Sunshowers, Galang, Pull Up The People, Hombre