More MIA

[Spencer Chow]

thank you mr soup! i particularly enjoyed one ILM person saying that "reading the dissensus thread on MIA "literally made me physically sick". still, i do think there's been waaay too much bad blood over this very mediocre record, so i wish it would all die down a while.

I'm always happy to entertain. I very similarly enjoyed your posts over at the "total sewer" of ILM!

In any case, if anyone still cares, here's a real video link to a performance/interview on KCRW this morning:
http://kcrw.com/smil/mb050502MIA.ram

The performance is great and she clearly seems to be in full command of her politics.

 

[baboon2004]

What amazes me is just how hysterical the anti MIA front is. The sheer outrage so many people here are voicing seems totally out of proportion. Like, whats the problem, really? MIA's popularity can only increase that of baile, dancehall, grime whatever. She certainly isn't taking away from legitimate artists, and what the fuck is wrong with donning the trappings of another style of music or going to art school?

The Velvet Underground, as much as I adore, were the hugest group of effete art-school wankers ever to stride the stages of New York. By their own admission. So where then for MIA?

God I'm tired of this so-called debate.

Amen to that.

So, what was this grand debate all about again? I think more than a few people have been arguing at cross-purposes.

 

[Woebot]

oh no more MIA!!!

As, months later, I continue to lose friends over my dislike of this record (Jesus you'd really wonder if you were MIA or Diplo what the fucking hell my problem was!!!) I thought I'd come back with a couple of fresh (at least to me) insights.

a) The like/dislike of this record seems to founder, quite precisely on whether the listener is from the UK or USA. People from the UK I reckon are more liable to dislike it. Now you could ascribe this the naturally libidinous qualities of this item as an exotic import as reason why Americans liked it, but actually I think the truth runs a little deeper. I reckon Americans are much more open to trans-class culture. I reckon the UK's objection to MIA is 99% to do with people seeing her as someone who "fakes" her class. I wonder how many US rappers there are who, in spite of acting like Gangsters, are actually college-educated? I wouldnt be surprised if the number wasnt quite high. Speaking for myself, the reason why I find Kanye so damn interesting, is that he's broken open this whole issue of class.

b) Briefly. It strikes me that if you're a working-class person (which I'm of course NOT) then your status as working class must, if it isn't something you're ashamed of, be something your proud of. Actually (and please shoot me down if you think I'm out of line) I reckon your status as genuinely working-class actually becomes, in a weird kind of not necessarily Capitalist (though quite often) a commodity. Therefore, to pretend you're "working class" (which MIA may or may not inadvertantly have done) is to commit a form of theft, its to commit an act of brutality against oppressed people. And THAT'S another reason why I can't stand the MIA record.

Heard 'Galang' on someone's stereo the other day, and again it curdled my blood.

 

[martin]

1

 

[gabriel]

Heard 'Galang' on someone's stereo the other day, and again it curdled my blood.

but come on, it's cos it's a really really shit tune done by someone who can't rap at all, with awful lyrics,... not cos it's fake. (not that i don't agree with the stuff about class etc, just that i don't think this is why i hate mia)

 

[zoilus]

"Therefore, to pretend you're "working class" (which MIA may or may not inadvertantly have done) is to commit a form of theft, its to commit an act of brutality against oppressed people. And THAT'S another reason why I can't stand the MIA record."

Matt, are you not verging here on saying it makes you mad but you know maybe you're wrong to be?

Because you know she "may not" have pretended anything, inadvertantly or, uh, vertantly. Unless you have some kinda evidence that she is lying about her life story - about which she's totally upfront as far as I can tell - Maya grew up real, council-estate poor. Then she got scholarships and went to schools you don't consider authentically working class. And why does she mess up your mental categories? Because she's an immigrant whose life doesn't fit into the familiar English class boxes. She's mobile, geographically and sociologically. But she's proud of where she comes from. She believes in solidarity with that. (Whether she's adept at expressing it is another, fair issue, but a different one.)

I think that maybe the reason (North) Americans don't react the way you do is because we're more familiar with this story - because almost everybody here is ultimately from an immigrant family. We know the complications of that mobility - when are you no longer who you were and who is anybody else to say? - but we can't draw a firm line.

(Hi everybody - I don't come here too often lately, too busy, but wish I could. It's always interesting.)

 

[Canada J Soup]

I don't know that MIA is necessarily representing herself as working class...I think she's just saying that she was poor growing up. Within the context of class structures and identity as they exist in Britain,* I’m not sure that this is necessarily the same thing.


*A beast that probably deserves its own thread...I'd start one meself but then I wouldn't be able to piss off out of work in five minutes.

 

[joeschmo]

i like this

<a href="http://sugarhigh.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005810.html">"So why is it so important to delegitimate M.I.A.?"</a>

 

[ripley]

Therefore, to pretend you're "working class" (which MIA may or may not inadvertantly have done) is to commit a form of theft, its to commit an act of brutality against oppressed people.

This is quite intriguing, completely apart from any assessment of the artist in question.

I'm unclear by how you mean "commodity" in relation to "claiming/being perceived as working class"

you're saying, if I get you, that only some people have a legitimate right to this claiming/being. That seems to me rather un-property like, rather un-commodity like. if it's a commodity, then isn't it usually alienable?

if it's inextricable from identity (like moral rights of the author) then surely it's not a commodity, is it? The rights to it derive from somewhere else than the usual understandings of the commodity relationship, or the property relation. You have to look elsewhere: culture, identity.. some other institution that grants rights.

I don't think "theft" is really a useful term, except that it gets people's moral dander up in ways other things don't (seems like it's okay to be absolutist about transgressions of the property system - i.e. economic trasnsgressions, but we must be relativists about things like insult, obscenity, fakeness).

(perhaps this deserves another thread, if anyone but me is interested in this kind of thing..)

 

[dominic]

(perhaps this deserves another thread, if anyone but me is interested in this kind of thing..)

this is precisely the kind of "meta" issue i like to talk about

(i'm usually not qualified to participate in discussions that directly pertain to music as i'm way behind the musical knowledge curve on this board and, old geezer that i am, not really on top of new music)

however, as a spectator of intellectual sport, i'd like to see ripley face off against tim finney on this issue

i.e., the various "claims" that people (music makers, djs, fanatics, scenesters, punters, etc) have to music VERSUS "interpellation" and "false consciousness"

 

[dominic]

to me rather un-property like, rather un-commodity like. if it's a commodity, then isn't it usually alienable?

if it's inextricable from identity (like moral rights of the author) then surely it's not a commodity, is it? The rights to it derive from somewhere else than the usual understandings of the commodity relationship, or the property relation. You have to look elsewhere: culture, identity.. some other institution that grants rights.

I don't think "theft" is really a useful term, except that it gets people's moral dander up in ways other things don't (seems like it's okay to be absolutist about transgressions of the property system - i.e. economic trasnsgressions, but we must be relativists about things like insult, obscenity, fakeness).

first, and i say this merely to avoid misunderstanding, i actually do like m.i.a., that is, everytime i hear one of her records out i start to tap my feet or sway my hips -- still not sure if i'll go so far as to buy her album

and i like her voice

now onward to the "meta" issues . . . .

i think by the term "theft," woebot has in mind the more general concept of "trespass"

and i think that by using the term "commodity," woebot meant to suggest that certain kinds of property cannot and ought not to be made into freely transferable commodities, that people can cheapen, exploit, fake, sell

identity is a kind of property, i.e., you become what you are by entering into an appropriative relationship with different parts of your surroundings -- you make this apple your own, eat the apple, digest the apple -- and by more complicated appropriative processes, you make this way of smoking a cigarette your own mannerism, you make this way of walking your own walk, this way of dancing your own style of dance, etc, etc

you make someone else's arguments and ideas your own if you "digest" them thoroughly (even if technically you misunderstand/misappropriate the finer points)

what is your own may come to you, as it were, by the grace of god or nature, such as your curly hair, the tone of your voice, etc

other things are your own b/c you were born into that circumstance, e.g., class background, ethnic background

and still other things become your own b/c you seek out what is alien and strange and then struggle to come to terms with it

AND SO woebot's argument seems to be that it's cool to appropriate some things but not other things -- in particular, you shouldn't appropriate someone else's class background, especially if that background is lower or working class, b/c to do so is insulting (or patronizing)

so maybe the trespass here is more akin to "insult" than "theft"? or does it have the complexion of both "insult" and "theft"? and perhaps other kinds of trespass as well?

(again, insult is a trespass against someone's sense of his own identity or nature -- and so it's a failure to give proper respect to another's identity -- i.e., a failure of recognition -- and the trespass can be subjective, objective or both)

 

[dominic]

I reckon Americans are much more open to trans-class culture. I reckon the UK's objection to MIA is 99% to do with people seeing her as someone who "fakes" her class. I wonder how many US rappers there are who, in spite of acting like Gangsters, are actually college-educated? I wouldnt be surprised if the number wasnt quite high. Speaking for myself, the reason why I find Kanye so damn interesting, is that he's broken open this whole issue of class.

america's the land of writing your own story, of the invented self

see the great gatsby

or see the "myspace" phenomenon, where everybody tries to come across as twenty times the rock star than they likely ever could in real life -- and where i happened to run into a number of american dissensus participants the other day -- joe nice, ripley, kid kameleon and the canadian ringer kuma -- although "myspace" is worldwide, it's clearly an american invention and the great preponderance of people on it are american

or see this book = "The Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture" -- by Anne Norton

The exchange of a literary for a corporeal identity marks the exchange of the old world for the new. Under the ancien regime one was born into one's place. Family ties determined not only one's place but the understanding one had of one's self. Much of this remains. Yet in the new world, one could overcome the conditions of one's birth. One could remake oneself in writing . . . . Lincoln, who rose from poverty to preeminence, is perhaps the most renowned example of the literary reconstruction of the self. When asked of his past, he said he preferred to leave it in obscurity. Through reading and the practice of law, through writing and election, he remade himself

and later on in intro to same book . . . .

This startling confabulation of the quick and the dead, the two- and the three-dimensional, is often read as evidence of the incapacity in the American mind, another element in a much-lamented decline. The American horror of aristocratic distinction has produced citizens not only lacking in taste but in more fundamental modes of discrimination, unable to discern the boundaries between themselves and their creations. There is a sense, of course, in which this nonsense. The "average American" who opened the door to Fred Flintstone would be very suprised indeed. No one expected to see Clark Kent's byline in the evening paper, or J. R. Ewing at a meeting of oilmen. What we see in the American acceptance of these fictive persons -- in certain contexts, and for certain purposes -- is not a decline into ignorance but an increase in sophistication . . . . The inclusion of fictive persons in conversation as in law [reference to corporate entities] bears witness to the popular recognition that persons, and personality, are social constructions. Americans, in such acts, take the literary self for granted. They assume it and in this assumption acknowledge that those who participate in the political, economic, and social life of our culture do so in character, in roles defined without their full knowledge or consent, with personalities, interests, and ends that they develop and express through representation. They recognize that they--and all others--figure in the political order not in their natural but in their literary constitutions . . . . This construction of themselves as people of the text makes the charge that Americans mistake their creations for themselves not altogether nonsensical. The regime makes them their own creation. Collectively, they author their common constitution. They are, in their singularity, the authors of their private constitutions.

and still further . . . .

The institutions of representative government, and the establishment of written constitutions for nations and their citizens, are not peculiar to the United States . . . . [However, t]he creation of a new world order manifests itself materially in American culture, particularly American popular culture, in what Umberto Eco describes as a "furious hyperreality"

in short, if maya's a poseur, americans are not inclined to care

(though this statement is seemingly contradicted by vanilla ice, who was reviled for being a poseur -- and indeed being a poseur or wigga is something that every white hip hop artist or fan must deal with)

(perhaps b/c most americans are not too well versed in grime or baile funk or reggaeton, the possibility that m.i.a. is something of a poseur likely does not even occur to them)

what matters is whether the music is catchy and compelling -- and on this point i'm kinda straddling the fence -- i.e., i like mia so far as it goes, but don't see her record having much of a shelf life -- i.e., mia is catchy but ultimately not compelling music

 

[mms]

i've got a mate who's tamil and he's pretty fucked off with the whole 'my dads a tiger' promotional aspect of her pr, esp as they and the government are totally responsible for killing millions and destroying the country.
he has no support for the 'cause' at all as its a miserable mess of human catastrophe and fails to see how the tigers are heroic as so many der-brains in the press have naively labeled them to be.

 

[blissblogger]

perhaps in the wake of the events of the last few days Maya will drop the "sexy" terrorism imagery?

i don't really understand what Jane Dark was getting at in that piece to be honst... presumably those who argue her "politics" are on the nugatory side do so because they think really important stuff is getting trivialized... again lines like "i got the bombs to make you blow" have a freshly offensive tang to them...

 

[ripley]

about Maya herself.. a few points made earlier rings true to me.

1) if she's not lying about her family or her past - she's not appropriating anything. It's just a truth that doesn't fit in to more rigid images of class identity. some find this offensive?

2) I reckon some Tamils hate the reference, while others, who are supporters of the Tigers don't hate it. fair enough.

3) and about the (new) offensiveness of the bombing references? all this seems a bit silly to me. Admittedly, things are still quite fresh in London so sensitivities are likely to be high - 2 weeks after Sept 11 2001 I played at an event where I dropped a Jeru track where he says "blow shit up like the Twin Towers" (a reference to the earlier attempt to blow them up), and I pulled the record off, I felt awful. And even now I think more about it than perhaps I would have before. But that's more proof of my parochial and local emotional imagination, not any kind of general moral judgment. bombing has been happening, for a long time, to all kinds of people and few people seem offended by references to it when they (or someone they know personally) haven't recently suffered it. I can understand people saying that as listeners their responses have changed now that they themselves have been closer to actual bombs.. but I don't think it necessarily changes the responsibility of artists.

I mean - she did quite well in NY, it seems, (let alone the rest of the US) despite terrorism references. I think audiences are a bit more sophisticated. It's not like nobody knows what bombs are or hasn't thought of them before now. It's not like she's the first to refer to them, either.

Is it because she is more authentically, or less authentically connected to the Tigers that bomb references are somehow extra offensive coming from her? I think Dark is sort of addressing that question - not sure how much I buy it but it's interesting.

 

[martin]

--

 

[mms]

I mean - she did quite well in NY, it seems, (let alone the rest of the US) despite terrorism references. I think audiences are a bit more sophisticated. It's not like nobody knows what bombs are or hasn't thought of them before now. It's not like she's the first to refer to them, either.

Is it because she is more authentically, or less authentically connected to the Tigers that bomb references are somehow extra offensive coming from her? I think Dark is sort of addressing that question - not sure how much I buy it but it's interesting.

no it's because between the tamils and the sri lankan government tamil country has been completely obliterated, over religious political and geographic issues.
they are also the leading perpetrators of suicide attacks in the world, quite some way above hamas. They also use children as soldiers and suicide attackers.
so whats the deal with actually having the gaul to exploit this connection, they are a fanantical maoist guerrilla movement in the midst of a horrible civil war, that has killed way over 150,000 people.
The things that the singalese have done to the tamils are totally unfair but for a lightweight pop act to get milage out of references and connections and chic from this kind of terror is wholly wrong.
its nothing to do with her i don't care abou her it's what she perpetrates and the way it is eaten up by so called 'sophisticated' audiences.

 

[Woebot]

joe strummer

hmm. not really with you on this martin. for all the supposed rhetoric i dont think punk was ever working-class (with the obvious exception of oi which was effectively a tiny offshoot) it was always trans-class/arty/bohemian. even american punk, like the minutemen, although it emerged from working class music it was (i reckon at least!) bohemian. for all the huffing and puffing at the time i think there was precious little in the way of contradiction between joe's background and the general thrust of punk.

afaic "urban music" like Country appears to me at least to be defiantly working class.

though of course tell me fuck off and punch my face in!

america's the land of writing your own story, of the invented self

i think you've nailed it with this dominic

 

[martin]

hmm. not really with you on this martin. for all the supposed rhetoric i dont think punk was ever working-class (with the obvious exception of oi which was effectively a tiny offshoot) it was always trans-class/arty/bohemian. even american punk, like the minutemen, although it emerged from working class music it was (i reckon at least!) bohemian. for all the huffing and puffing at the time i think there was precious little in the way of contradiction between joe's background and the general thrust of punk.

afaic "urban music" like Country appears to me at least to be defiantly working class.

though of course tell me fuck off and punch my face in!

No, I agree that punk wasn't particularly class-affiliated and wouldn't have resulted in much more than pub rock / street R&B with a black sense of humour, without the contributions from the art school crowd. But in terms of content, 'The Clash' LP is definitely aimed at projecting an image of the group as tough, working class hoodlums. It's here that I think Strummer and MIA are similar (actually, apart from what I've read on here, I know practically nothing about her background). And the Oi! scene had its fair share of posers too - the singer in Combat 84 attended Charterhouse public school, for instance. It doesn't bother me either way really, but to be honest, I just see MIA as disco fodder with silly lyrics. I prefer it to Wiley though.

You could be onto something there with country, but my mum tortured me when I was young by playing Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson records, so I'm not going back to investigate.

No I won't punch you in the face, all the edited posts on here weren't meant as personal attacks, just the result of a weekend burst of nihilism where I decided I was going to become a spokesman for the working class and appoint MIA as the new Virgin Mary.

 

[Flyboy]

perhaps in the wake of the events of the last few days Maya will drop the "sexy" terrorism imagery?

i don't really understand what Jane Dark was getting at in that piece to be honst... presumably those who argue her "politics" are on the nugatory side do so because they think really important stuff is getting trivialized... again lines like "i got the bombs to make you blow" have a freshly offensive tang to them...

What, more offensive than using the events of the last few days to score points in an argument about a pop star?

No, actually, you're right: I threw my old Public Enemy CDs in the bin at the weekend - just couldn't face listening to music produced by people who called themselves "the Bomb Squad" anymore. It's just sick, really, isn't it?

Those chaps at Clear Channel had the right idea in the wake of 9/11. As did the people who decided Massive Attack had to change their name to Massive while the Gulf War was on.