MIA

Too unspecific a remark, I think. Substitute "Madonna" or, yeah, "Joe Strummer" and it still resonates, but doesn't capture the uniqueness of The M.I.A. Problem, especially as he's described it in the previous grafs.

I have an opinion on that but it is unnecessarily inflammatory (ie, racial)

x-post to Alex in SF: That's even more cynical than I give her credit for, tbh. Hide a tape recorder to catch yourself being misquoted by a journalist you don't trust just to get into the New York Times and then fight for a correction? Byzantine.

well now i'm all curious, dan!

same here!

Well it's inflammatory because it's easily deflatable but I think there's an element of "magic Tamil" (for lack of a better phrase) going on here where I think there is some overt or subconscious expectation that having brown skin and spending some time growing up in Sri Lanka will automatically make M.I.A. into a sage, consistent and reliable narrator on events there. Where those inconsistencies pop up, they aren't taken as part of the environment she grew up in across her entire life and the people she's associated with; they're instead betrayals of some idealized image of her that seems to be hammered much harder in her case than it is for white performers doing similar things, and I think this pretty much is a reaction to dark-skinned people nonchalantly talking about violence fascinating and scaring white people.

"So better to be misquoted than to not be quoted at all?"

I think the line of thinking is that if you are misquoted that it's good to have tape recordings to prove that you were misquoted. It's pretty clear that this was win-win for her whether or not the piece was "trustworthy" or not. We're still talking about it a week later after all.

It's pretty clear that this was win-win for her whether or not the piece was "trustworthy" or not. We're still talking about it a week later after all.

Oh, how the bar has been set low.

It's pretty clear that this was win-win for her...

Uh, no.

Do you guys actually not understand how publicity works?

HI DERE, I think you're way off if you don't think MIA is totally presenting herself as an "authentic" voice. This isn't just people seeing dark-skin and going, "Oh, she must know what she's talking about." She definitely has a very insider thing going on. Even lyrically, she has this kind of poetic obscurity where you don't know what exactly she's talking about, but you trust that's because she knows something you don't.

"Even lyrically, she has this kind of poetic obscurity where you don't know what exactly she's talking about, but you trust that's because she knows something you don't."

Like the guy in Bush.

Or Michael Stipe!

Right, but not like Madonna really who is pretty easy to parse.

See, this leap from "personal experience" to "mouthpiece for Sri Lanka" is kind of exactly what I'm talking about.

are you really sure your trust in the wisdom behind her "poetic obscurity" is totally divorced from exoticism, mordy?

As opposed to just dismissing it as shitty lyric writing? I mean, some of it is evocative. Like any artist, either it's obscure and interesting or obscure and awful. If it's obscure and interesting you assume that there is something insider going on (like Dylan as the ultimate insider). When you find out that their insider image is actually compromised, you're kinda put off.

an interesting artist to compare her to might be K'naan, who doesn't come off as exotic or obscure, but as easily parsed and as an insider.

^I was actually thinking of K'Naan while reading Nabisco's piece and forgot to mention him here.

If it's obscure and interesting you assume that there is something insider going on (like Dylan as the ultimate insider). When you find out that their insider image is actually compromised, you're kinda put off.

I am pretty sure all of those "you"s should be "I"s

like I don't think you could write this kind of hitjob on k'naan, not least because he is much more open about what he's talking about. part of MIA's mystique is that she's willing to be full of shit (which is why she gets compared so much to lady gaga). so when you point out how full of shit she is, it makes an impact on her image. if someone wrote a similar piece about k'naan, they'd come off as a total dick. no one thinks he's trying to speak for anyone but his own experience. i think it's telling that people don't feel the same way about MIA, and not just because she has dark skin.

Okay, I'm willing to say that's my thing, but I don't think it's unique to me. Using obscure language generally indicates that someone is an insider. Look at how jargon is used in specialized fields or academia. It's a way of connoting that you're an insider and people who don't understand the language are outsiders. I don't think this is ONLY my thing.

Isn't K'naan's entire artistic persona built around the idea of saying primarily positive, uplifting stuff, and as a result about a bazillion times less controversial and prone to scrutiny than people who say incendiary stuff?

Just you wait until K'naan gets his NYT magazine profile and mouths off about Poppy Bush invading Somalia.

I don't know. He talks about how much his life in Somalia sucked. Some of his stuff is uplifting, but some is depressing. Also, MIA isn't REALLY incendiary. It has like the tone of being incendiary, but saying, "I'm not pro peace, I'm pro violence," is pretty banal under scrutiny. Is she saying that she believes that political difference should be settled through violence and not compromise? Is she saying that all politics are founded on coercive power? Is she saying that all states have a history of violence that they cover up? Is she saying that genocide is good if you don't get along with the people you like? Is she saying sometimes it just feels good to hit something? I mean, it's sound incendiary, but it's not actually saying anything at all.

"Is she saying that genocide is good if you don't get along with the people you like?" lol. total typo.

re insider jargon:

Aziz: Hey, rumba nala patih!
M.I.A.: Huh?
Aziz: You speak Tamil right?
M.I.A.: Yeah...
Aziz: So I was saying, rumba nala patih..
M.I.A.: (Smiles as she gets in her ride)

hahahahahahahahahaha I finally read that blog entry, it is really fantastic

Mordy, you're on a hiding to nothing comparing pop lyrics, or any art, with academic language. Musicians are lyrically obscure for a whole host of reasons - if they're insiders, then it is only in the sense that they are inside their own heads. MIA isn't using Sri Lankan insider language - she's playing with phrases, in a typically hip hop way.

Mostly I was thinking about this Nabisco line:

"In my personal observation, not that many people who transfer between the third world and the first-- even at the age Arulpragasam did-- are anywhere near so blithe and carefree about packaging themselves as authentic representatives of this stuff."

And this K'Naan line, from "What's Hardcore?":
"If I rhymed about home and got descriptive / I'd make 50 Cent look like Limp Bizkit."

And so K'Naan is engaging in a certain kind of oneupsmanship w/r/t who comes from the more violent or hardscrabble background, who's more authentically "hardcore." But as I understand it, his larger point is that anyone who *truly* experienced violence (like he had) wouldn't want or need to fetishize it.

^^ This OTM.

If it's not obvious, I'm almost entirely with Dan on this front.

Plus basically I think there's a level on which M.I.A. has participated in that. I think she's used some of the fascination Dan's talking about to open certain windows for herself. Which I think has mostly helped her, but is also kind of a problem for her.

For instance, it means that when an article suggests she might just be a normal messy human and not some righteous genius, people might be surprised and think she suddenly looks "fraudulent" or "inauthentic" -- not because she ever actually claimed to be a righteous genius, but because she was open about letting people project that onto her. I don't know if "courted" is the right word, but I feel like she happily absorbed those expectations.

just to add to the discussion, I have never met a single person in my life who has really given a shit about mia

No one on this thread has suggested that critics are people.

Other people you could compare/contrast with M.I.A. include Akon, Kenna, and Wyclef. (Each of their backgrounds probably includes more proximity with poverty than major political violence, but Kenna grew up under a not-very-nice regime and Akon might have been around for a Senegal/Mauritania border war.)

what about hitler

xp I think the gender/class differences between those three artists and MIA are not insignificant. For better or worse, I don't think there really is anyone quite like her.

Oh, I know, for sure. These are just the first pop people to mind who could maybe have drawn certain things from their backgrounds, if they'd wanted to. The only one who's come remotely close is Wyclef, I think, and that's still a long, long distance.

I don't see the comparison. MIA's dad was a Tamil revolutionary scholar. It's not just that she's Sri Lankan. (Not to take anything away from your terrific blog btw - I just don't see much point in putting her next to Akon.)

I think the idea is "people whose backgrounds might have helped them have things to say about things like the third world, global poverty, or political violence."

So the compare/contrast is look at four people who grew up in Senegal, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Haiti and how they have or have not chosen to refer to that experience after coming to the west and making pop. Obviously with Akon this is a HUGE "contrast!"

And it's not just about her father or Sri Lanka -- I mean, she pulls music from around the world, records in Liberia, gets Afrikan Boy on a track, mentions spots around the world in songs, talks about a UK immigrant perspective ... I think she's pretty clearly trying to pull together something global with her music, right?

Nabisco, I thought your piece was great - it's what the Hirschberg piece should have been if she was interested in substantively dealing with issues instead of gossip/scoring points. I agree with your points, but I think it's interesting that you made it through a whole piece describing MIA's complicated relationship with the imagery of political violence without once mentioning the words "War on Terror", "9/11", etc. - maybe that stuff has become just part of the air we breathe nowadays so that it doesn't need mentioning, but I think it underestimates the sophistication of MIA's political critique to leave out the other side - namely the side of those like George W. Bush who used the intentionally vague specter of "terrorism" to cudgel political opponents and fuel a hubristic geopolitical program. I think MIA astutely realized that the vagueness around this concept of "terrorism" was a double-edged sword, and she figured out how to play the other side, in a way that could be hip and appealing to many. So you can see it as naive sloganeering, but you can also see her intentional vagueness as part of her message - that "terrorism" has become what I think Frank Kogan would call a "superword" - ie., a word that can settle disputes based on who has the authority to apply it.

Anyways, I'm in the mood to forgive MIA a lot right now, since I just heard the Sleigh Bells album for the first time. Holy shit!

im not sure that 'at least shes not gwb' is a good enough reason to give her a pass for being just as cartoony

I think that MIA, like anyone else in her artist class/position, felt a little entitled and then burned by that immigration snafu. If memory serves, she upped the stridency level significantly shortly thereafter, no doubt encouraged by the notion that getting shut out of the US for a bit bought her some extra cred.

Two more things: since "Kala" came out, I've wondered to myself the significance of "recorded in Liberia." What does this even mean, symbolically? Why there?

Also, much more than the silly truffle-kerfuffle, MIA's cheeky boast that she basically remade he LA mansion into a "commune" with 8 of her friends rubbed me the wrong way, like she was justifying the largess by, like, spinning it into a move for the people. I mean, gosh, they even had to buy the house next door to make more room!

Oh, and a genuine question: what is the general feeling toward MIA in the UK, where her origins might resound a little more loudly than they do in the US? Since we are talking race and politics and racial politics, I'd suggest her exotic "otherness" as a person of Indian descent is greatly overestimated, at least in America, which is generally preoccupied by Latinos and persons of African descent, discourse-wise, for obvious historic and/or geographic reasons.

Oh, and Nabisco, you're right: there is something larger, more "global" at work with MIA. But I can't quite put my finger on how it differs from the international ways of, say, Bjork, whose music is just as much a polyglot hodge-podge.

im not sure that 'at least shes not gwb' is a good enough reason to give her a pass for being just as cartoony

― its like why GROCERY BAG and not saddam? (deej), Friday, June 4, 2010 8:38 PM (31 minutes ago)

lol thread connections

so what did people think of the fashion spread in the magazine? the silence is deafening!

burn baby burn

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/pixel.gif

i haven't really read hardly any of this thread, but i agree with Dan, and tbh i find myself lazily falling into this kind of judgment of M.I.A. myself all the time.

Dan, if you haven't read it already, I think you would dig the essay "Where Have All the Natives Gone?" by Rey Ch0w.

hs have you read [nabisco]'s piece yet