Might I Add

-What I wish I could have told M.I.A. at the show, instead of just kissing her and knocking her over-

Maya Arulpragasam has had much virtual ink spilled over her in recent months. For the uninitiated, this Sri-Lankan-born rapper/beat producer/graphic and film artist has been rapidly adopted as the darling princess of the indie and underground hip-hop scenes. Her debut album, “Arular,” is a heart-grippingly raw, complex mixture of dancehall-inflected world beats mixed with M.I.A.’s sing-songy, surprisingly dark wordplay. I absolutely adore it.

In an illuminating interview with Pitchfork*, she discusses her motivations in transitioning from visual media to making music:
“I went to hip-hop and they were going on about something and it was like, "Dude, shut up about the Rams already!" So I went to indie and they were going on about wanting to slit their wrists and I'd be like, "Aww, how could you? Why don't you just make yourself useful?" You go to any other genre, and there's shit going on. You go to world music-- not that I did-- and there's nothing going on there: There's six billion people and they're all pissed off, yet they can't pick up the fucking stick and bang out a few tunes?”

Now if she were in a Presidential debate for powerful musicians, running on a Reform-the-Left ticket, that casual statement would have secured my vote in a second. M.I.A., as many have noted, personifies the zeitgeist of the mid-decade point in post-Millennial pop art. The indie-dance-garage scene (Franz Ferdinand, et. al) has become increasingly revisionist and retroactive, adding coy, minute updates to a movement that in a contemporary context leans only toward classicist nostalgia, hardly the sort of compelling direction that its major progenitors—post-punk and new-wave—offered in their original incarnation. Hip hop continues to drift its way through the bipolar paradigm of socially-conscious glitz (see Kweli with Kanye); the comparatively youthful genre is creatively well-ahead of contemporary rock, but is being stretched far within its sonic potential. This leaves us at M.I.A., who is indeed, musically and culturally, “pushing things forward,” to quote Mike Skinner.

I’m not going to write another metanalysis of her eclectic influences, which range across a multi-continental palate of Brazilian baile funk to Baltimore club go-go and a dozen sounds in-between, or break down the PLO references and taboo motifs of her lyrics (the album is highly autobiographical, offering insight into the modern refugee plight and sex trafficking). Rather, I only wish to celebrate the great value of M.I.A.’s voice and music to the current state of art, society and politics, a value which only seems to grow with the increasing costs of the global War on Terrorism and the increasing consolidation of Western media and thinking at large.

Maya exemplifies the hodge-podge cosmopolitanism of our time. Her singer, Cherry, was raised in Saint Catherine. Her romantic interest, DJ Diplo, is a White American who (in tandem with Hollertronix) mixes obscure, international sounds together like golden twine. Maya herself is London-born. She was raised in war-ravaged Sri-Lanka then transplanted to London at age 10; thus she has experienced the teething troubles of cultural bridging: firstly, the cold (discriminatory) shoulder of the (in her case) Anglo-Saxon establishment, her immediate reactionary options toward it (assimilation and rejection) and eventually, a Hegelian/DJ-esque dialectical synthesis of contradiction, irony and empowerment. Now it’s that final, newly-adjusted stage which is of particular note. Throughout the immigrant-receiving North, a fresh-faced, well-heeled party of first-generation immigrants is providing the impetus for a paradigmatic, multi-faceted shift the world has not seen since the height of colonialism.

Sure, most Nigerian and Indian university students are studying computer science and are more interested in a high entry-level income than ragga beatcore. And there is a very natural but ultimately non-productive drive toward ethnically-centred isolationism amongst some Arab and Turkish enclaves in Paris, amongst others. But there is a fledgling crop of creative-minded artists within our ranks (I count myself as a dual immigrant, spanning both Australia and the United States), a small, globe-spanning group who are at the heart of a new musical direction.

These artists are emotionally-abundant and identity-fragmented, drawing on the untapped inspiration of the migrant experience. And though the developing world is still flooded with Top-40 radio, devoid of region-specific message or utility, the tide is starting to reverse. Popular music was born through the Blues and Gospel, both rooted in the pain of African-America. Its most successful permutation, Rock and Pop, pull their pedigree from the sexuality and nervous energy of the White middle-class. Hip Hop was a different case; beginning with both block parties (DJing) and angsty ciphers (MCing) in its earliest form, its original voice was uniquely Black and culturally subversive. M.I.A. and the Sub-continental Reformation take these characteristics, add the vitality and emancipated power of the global “Other” (Coloured, as opposed to Black) to an already broad-based artform and repackages it in LP-sized pieces for its inevitable commercial audience: suburban, predominantly-White youth.

The audience at M.I.A.’s show was as diverse as I had imagined. There were hijab-adorned young women in the front row, fey indie boys, outnumbered hip hop heads, a lot of the college downloader caste and that most trying of concert inhabitants, gangs of homoerotic high school girls. Being first in line, I found it anthropologically satisfying seeing who rocked up and in what order. My five instantly-befriended diehards who had the privilege of a pre-show chat with Maya and Cherry during sound-check included an Indian and African-American couple, young political professionals and gap yearees. Such cultural eclecticism was all the more profound, however, when peering backward across the crowd during the opening stanza of personal highlight, “10 Dollar,” where hundreds of screaming “Oh-oh-oh-oh, Hey-Hey” refrains echoed throughout the sweaty, near-riotous venue. That the joyful chaos was being led onstage by two diminutive immigrants in short shorts and high-tops made the experience that much sweeter. Rule Britannia? Maybe for my father’s generation. Last night, a more applicable phrase would have been “Rule Tamil.”

But ultimately, like all great art, M.I.A.’s musical soul packs more punch than the actual event or the three-minute single. For every Galang-led car commercial, there’s a 13-year-old in Melbourne googling the word “Tamil Tiger” after class. A legion of young coloured girls whose eyes light up at the sight of a brown-skinned Asian on MTV instead of endless carbon-copy Kylies. A generation of fellow culture-hopping 20-somethings who hold the catharsis of childhood discrimination and assimilatory afterthoughts about our cousins back home in Malaysia clutched against our hearts. Countless young women throughout Sub-Saharan Africa contracting monogamous HIV from polygamous partners whose deaths may not be in vain. Because, M.I.A., future “Queen of pop music” or whatever hype-laced headline you want to call her, is not really all that futuristic. Our world as a whole has been consistently raping and oppressing young coloured people for a handful of centuries at the very least by this point.

As Maya herself says: “I'm chipping away! You ready for something new, hurry up.” Well keep chipping, M.I.A., knowing how many of us are behind you.

A raw, sexy, angry, cataclysmically beautiful voice is being unleashed upon an unsuspecting mass audience. And she is shouting into a microphone, over and over again, with a chorus of hundreds of passionate converts surrounding her:

“Pull up the People! Pull up the Poor!”

------------------- *http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/interviews/m/mia-05/