From Bullets to Bubblegum

M.I.A gets her message across

by: Robert Madden

Cross-wire political issues with pop music and make way for the world’s newest weapon for cultural warfare: M.I.A., a recording artist who takes no prisoners once she explodes onto the scene.

M.I.A. is the alias used by Maya Arulpragasam, a sexy 28-year-old Sri Lankan with tousled dark hair and slender legs. The eclectic sound of M.I.A. fuses dancehall riddim, electro groove, punk riffs and bhangra beats into infectious pop. While her contemporaries rap about pimping hoes and rock out serenades to newfound lovers, Arulpragasam defiantly spits violent verses like “it’s a bomb yo/ so run yo/ put away your stupid gun yo/ ’cos we see through like a protocol call/ that’s why we blow it up ’fore we go.”

Internet buzz had hipsters hooked on mp3 blogs that circulated M.I.A.’s first single, “Galang.” The song features electro drum patter that sounds like machine guns unloading and a catchy reggae hook. Arulpragasam sing-talks: “feds gonna get you/ pull the strings on the hood/ one paranoid youth/ blazin through the hood.” The tune culminates with a tribal cry that could be bellowed during a fireside celebration or war rally.

“Galang” is the first in an arsenal of songs created by M.I.A. that mash addictive forms of dance music, controversial lyrical content, and subversive delivery.

Arulpragasam learned how to balance heavy issues with aesthetic levity at London ’s Central Saint Martins Art School where she studied fine art and film. The year of her graduation she received word that her cousin killed himself in a suicide bombing in Sri Lanka , which was in the midst of an ethnic war. Arulpragasam was inspired to travel to Sri Lanka and recorded 60 hours of video footage during her search for youth culture in the third world country. When she returned to the university, she found no one was interested in political issues. Enhancing the images of conflict in Sri Lanka with neon colored urban graffiti and stencil art, Arulpragasam likened freedom fighters to street gangsters.

“It was so rare to find people trying to make work that went beyond what was cool, so you kept getting sucked into this vacuum,” Arulpragasam explained to The Independent. “The only way to get away with this subject was to prettify it. I had to trick people into thinking I was as shallow as they were, using the right colors and print-making styles.”

One of Arulpragasam’s pieces is a cartoon version of the twin towers with two spiraling airplanes tracing the shape of an “s” on top of the double lines. The final effect is the dollar sign and the phrase “Sept. 11.” Other graffiti art boasted shrouded faces, cloned marching soldiers, lime green palm trees with guerilla snipers and pastel purple hand grenades. The paintings were nominated for the alternative Turner prize and Pocko published the collection.

Maya Arulpragasam’s hot topic art caught the attention of Elastica’s Justine Frischmann. The musician hired Arulpragasam to provide the artwork for the band’s second album. Later, she followed them on tour in the U.S. for a video documentary. Elastica’s supporting act, Peaches, encouraged Arulpragasam to make music with her own Roland MC-505 Groovebox. “Galang” was then born, and the rest is history.

The label XL Recordings soon picked up M.I.A., offering her total artistic freedom. XL Recordings is also home to Prodigy and the White Stripes. Producers like Steve Mackie, Ross Orton and Richard X helped M.I.A. lay out heated tracks that lingered somewhere in forbidden territory and put Arulpragasam in the middle of a cultural war zone. The minimalist beats and fierce incantations are guaranteed earworms. Tunes like “10 Dollar,” which talk about child prostitution, and “Amazon,” in which M.I.A. is kidnapped as a political prisoner, are catchy pop pieces voiced over with Arulpragasam’s provocative flow. In “Pull Up the People” M.I.A. brings up the war on terrorism as she raps, “you no like the people/ they no like you/ then they go set it off with a big boom,” and later coos, “every gun in a battle is a son and daughter too/ why you wanna talk about who done who?”

Perhaps the most shocking rhyme is in “Freedom Skit” where Arulpragasam reveals: “freedom fighting dad bombed this pad/ called him a terror put him on wanted ads.” As it turns out, M.I.A. named her debut album, Arular, after her father’s freedom fighter codename. Born in London, Arulpragasam spent her childhood growing up in Sri Lanka as a Tamil minority. The ethnic war escalated and her father was introduced to Maya as an uncle in order to protect her from interrogations. At age 11, Arulpragasam and her family fled back to London as refugees, except for her father who remained. Arulpragasam’s father was a founding member of EROS, a militant Tamil group that fought for separation from the Sinhalese majority. Many say that EROS is a front organization for the LTTE, the Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eeelan. The LTTE has been accused of using child soldiers by the United Nations Children Fund and has been linked to the 1991 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide bomber.

This brown beauty does not attempt to disguise her colorful background. In fact, M.I.A. flaunts her ties to Tamil Tigers, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. “My Web site has had 58 hits from the U.S. government,” M.I.A. bragged to The Independent as if the fact gave her a new level of gangster – that is, gangster terrorist. In November 2004, M.I.A. began circulating an underground mix tape called Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol.1 and soon began performing live. M.I.A. often sports tiger printed shirts and has an animated tiger that runs across a projection screen during her sets.

M.I.A. was showcased at NYC’s Knitting Factory on Feb. 5. Posters of graffiti grenades and tanks decorated the venue as she soldier-stepped across the stage. For each ticket sold, two dollars went to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization for tsunami aid. The TRO has made headlines in world news because of accusations by the Sri Lankan government that it is a Tamil Tiger front organization using tsunami relief donations for terrorist funds. However, it is possible that these claims are propaganda from the Sinhalese ruling majority and the U.S. has recently removed the organization from its blacklist.

As if M.I.A. wasn’t flammable enough, she throws out her first single from Arular like a Molotov cocktail. “Sunshowers” borrows the quirky chorus from a similarly named ’70s song by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. It has already reached ringtone status and was played at the opening and closing of Matthew Williamson’s New York fashion week show. The music video looks like living pages from an issue of National Geographic magazine. Filmed in the jungles of South India by director Rajesh Touchriver, the all-Indian cast dances to the song’s mongrel beats as M.I.A. sings to a lion, a monkey and a cheetah: “you wanna go?/ you wanna win a war?/ like P.L.O. I don’t surrendo.” The cheery chorus loops in, “the sunshowers that fall on my troubles/ are over you my baby.” Even these innocent lines take on a new meaning as M.I.A. menacingly points to the camera mouthing, “and some showers I’ll be aiming at you/ ‘cos I’m watching you my baby.” Before airing the video, MTV demanded clarification of M.I.A.’s interpretation of the word “sunshowers” and asked if she would censor certain lyrics.

M.I.A. holds the ear captive as she raps against primal drums and high voltage electro effects, “bring me the reaper/ bring me a lawyer/ I’ll fight I’ll take ‘em on.” Ironically, the release of Arulpragasam’s Arular, which was set to invade U.S. record stores on Feb. 22, was postponed until March 22 due to legal issues over a sample. In an interview with Rolling Stone, M.I.A. declared, “I like taking people on. I’m a third-world refugee terrorist, or whatever.” This postmodern revolutionary may be an escapee from third world chaos, but M.I.A. is obviously not packing escapist music. M.I.A. shouts directly into the red phone about world issues in a manner that attacks the status quo with music that is white hot.