More MIA

[ryan17]

Alright.

Here is some fresh meat for everyone to tear into:

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



article/interview with M.I.A. on pitchfork:

3. M.I.A.'s father, for whom Arular is named, is a revolutionary with links to the Tamil Tigers. Although her lyrics are salt and peppered with violent imagery, M.I.A. has no terrorist affiliation. But politics follow her wherever she goes, and she likes it that way. (sure)

8. Bloggers really love her, but she has yet to make Billboard's acquaintance. (dissensus?)

also: they use matt's "shanty house" term as well.

 

[bun-u]

Now, next thread...

yes, we've done Sovereign and M.I.A all we need is another female artist and authenticity debates are sure to follow.

I’ve heard some of MIA stuff now and while not being particularly taken by it, I cannot see it having much of an impact …. some of you protesteth too much !

 

[Grievous Angel]

Another side issue: if the Iko Iko reference is what I think it is -- i.e. as in "hey now HEY NOW hey now HEY NOW iko iko i-nay..." then that is an interesting reference to use.

I dunno what Matt meant by that reference, but the Iko Iko chant is a straight lift from Voodoo. Steve Wilson did a long thread on this last year over on WiccaUK. It's position in, simultaneously, hardcore magic and pop culture is amusing and potentially pregnant with meaning...

 

[dubplatestyle]

the m.i.a. album is getting a HUGE pr push over here in the u.s. - the times top 10 list thingee she did, new yorker, even the philly inquirer ran a full page A&E profile [complete with "world music" quote from sfj's piece...no "shanty house" tho, sorry matt ) on her last sunday and they usually never cover this sort of thing until about six months after the album comes out and then only if there's a sort of popular consensus behind it, not to mention all the usual outlets like spin, RS, blender, blah de blah. now i know this in no way translates to sales, especially when an album keeps getting pushed back and can't capitalise on blanket press coverage, but i'd surprised if it didnt turn into at least an underground hit. (we put franz ferdinand and modest mouse into the top 20 last year, so who knows. i could also see one of the singles being a random, one-off lumidee/nina sky style hit.)

i also don't think the album, once heard, can possibly live up to the amount of hype people are piling on it, both pro and con.

 

[dubplatestyle]

which is to say i think i'll remember 2005 as the year we talked about m.i.a. a lot rather than the year she broke open popular culture. though it's still early days.

 

[stelfox]

i hope you're right

 

[markp]

altho i like her record quite a bit, my creeping fear with m.i.a., especially after speaking to her and getting a whiff of her politics (which someone somewhere rightfully described as 'faux-naive') is that she's far more opportunistic than she is insightful. its the way she double dutches between the politically retarded hipster/shoreditch/vice set and the gentler, more progressive politicking of npr that sets off alarm bells. surely after years of going to 'all the right parties' with 'all the right people' -- (not my quotes) she's well aware that an alarming proportion of hipsters/tastemakers/whatever parse any old terrorist/atrocity refs as cutting-edge/artful/desireable? (im thinking nathan barley and 'murder of a vietcong' here)

that said, xgau's obv. right to say that "brown skin is always real". i guess that's what makes any accusations of free lunching almost impossible to follow through on.

 

[stelfox]

<i>is that she's far more opportunistic than she is insightful</i>

all that i've ever been saying. if people were saying: "MIA isn't as smart as she wants to appear, flim-flams about politically, is rather trite and facile in many ways, but i love the way she sounds" i'd have absolutely no problem whatever. unfortunately they're not - far from it, in fact. she's being held up as some kind of pancultural cypher, that's what i find irksome. and sure xgau is right, but there are *different shades* of brown, with different shades of experience. (ftr i'm pretty uncomfortable talking about shades of skin, but it's out there already). hers is one in a million stories, all equally worth hearing. sadly, with her being put forward as the great aggregator of world culture, this is far less likely.

 

[mms]

<i>is that she's far more opportunistic than she is insightful</i>

all that i've ever been saying. if people were saying: "MIA isn't as smart as she wants to appear, flim-flams about politically, is rather trite and facile in many ways, but i love the way she sounds" i'd have absolutely no problem whatever. unfortunately they're not - far from it, in fact. she's being held up as some kind of pancultural cypher, that's what i find irksome. and sure xgau is right, but there are *different shades* of brown, with different shades of experience. (ftr i'm pretty uncomfortable talking about shades of skin, but it's out there already). hers is one in a million stories, all equally worth hearing. sadly, with her being put forward as the great aggregator of world culture, this is far less likely.

me too but no one reads my fukkin posts.

 

[blissblogger]

real to real

>"brown skin is always real".

i honestly have no idea what he meant by that except to make some kind of genuflection of piety

if "real" is taken as an indice of deprivation/oppression/exclusion, the implication, as far as one can extract it, seems to be that any brown-skinned person is always in a worse position than any white person

so that the guy who owns Harrods or someone in the ruling class of Ghana is realer than, oh, some poor white guy cooking up crystal meth in some godforsaken region of rural America

the other implication is that within brown skin races all differences of ethnicity, religion, class, etc etc are erased

 

[markp]

i don't think any of that necessarily follows, simon. what i took from it was that having brown skin ALWAYS qualifies you to speak from the perspective of a visible minority, regardless of your class level. white never enters into it.

the other implication is that within brown skin races all differences of ethnicity, religion, class, etc etc are erased

i dont understand how this follows either. he's not saying these things don't matter, he's saying that they're never big enough to preclude someone from the right to speak from that perspective. it's not a response to the argument that m.i.a.'s personal politics are jumbled, its a response to the charge that she's long since waived the right to voice them.

 

[joeschmo]

"if "real" is taken as an indice of deprivation/oppression/exclusion, the implication, as far as one can extract it, seems to be that any brown-skinned person is always in a worse position than any white person

so that the guy who owns Harrods or someone in the ruling class of Ghana is realer than, oh, some poor white guy cooking up crystal meth in some godforsaken region of rural America"


Mohammed Al-Fayed vs. white crystal meth addict is a convenient binary, because it moves the terrain away from race and onto economics. But no matter how rich Mohammed Al-Fayed is, how good a life he leads--and I'm sure he lives a very good life--he will always be vulnerable to a type of discrimination that a white crystal meth addict never faces, regardless of how we might weigh their situations on some spurious index. Just read the English tabloids. His race is a visible, unerasable marker in a way that whiteness simply isn't. And that's real.

 

[Woebot]

I like that--I "ran the script." No, I heard a record, had no back knowledge about it, and came to a conclusion based entirely on what I was hearing. If that's lazy or non-committal, oh fucking well.

Sorry feller, thought about it and decided I didnt agree with you. Wasn't intending to call YOU lazy or non-commital, just the practice of describing one music as being valid as another. I probably do it all the time.

 

[Woebot]

Now, next thread...

Couldn't agree more. Locking this thread.

 

[Woebot]

lord knows what could be added here. but if anyone wants it, it's theirs.

 

[gumdrops]

"if "real" is taken as an indice of deprivation/oppression/exclusion, the implication, as far as one can extract it, seems to be that any brown-skinned person is always in a worse position than any white person

so that the guy who owns Harrods or someone in the ruling class of Ghana is realer than, oh, some poor white guy cooking up crystal meth in some godforsaken region of rural America"


Mohammed Al-Fayed vs. white crystal meth addict is a convenient binary, because it moves the terrain away from race and onto economics. But no matter how rich Mohammed Al-Fayed is, how good a life he leads--and I'm sure he lives a very good life--he will always be vulnerable to a type of discrimination that a white crystal meth addict never faces, regardless of how we might weigh their situations on some spurious index. Just read the English tabloids. His race is a visible, unerasable marker in a way that whiteness simply isn't. And that's real.

most definitely. but seeing as most of the critics and bloggers who have passed judgement on MIA so far have been white, perhaps the issue hasnt been acknowledged as it might have been. i know reynolds' is a god round here, but i found his analogy that she is basically the same as a white cultural tourist pretty distasteful and just wrong. this whole idea that because she went to art school she is less authentic is ridiculous. asian kids do listen to a wide variety of music in london, from R&B and hip hop to desi beats to bhangra and reggae, etc so MIA's fusion to my ears at least, isnt that different, even if she does take in baille funk. really, rather than attacking MIA, perhaps some of the 'hate' should be aimed at the hipsterish diplo - hes likely the main reason she got into baille funk and reggaeton and the like!

but why is authenticity such a factor in critique of MIA? I dont see anyone all that bothered about the fact most white rockers are all middle class and well educated, wheres the authenticity there? does it matter more because MIA is sri lankan? its almost like saying MIA is a privileged faker just because she was educated. we might as well dismiss kano cos hes not from an estate and studied to be a graphic designer too. this reminds me of old white critics being more obsessed with a blues artists' authenticity than his musical merits, as if the music isnt worth much unless its authentic, whatever that might imply.

 

[martin]

MIA or Mosquita from Popworld? You know what I'm alluding to here - no lyrics, no music, no straw men. just 100% raw fuckshed action. Who'd you go for?

 

[stelfox]

martin you've saved this thread from itself. good work.

 

[blissblogger]

last word (maybe)

i said this on the other thread but i'll put here just so it's easy for the PC-er than thou hyper-sensitive crew to refer to:

"here is a record that is SLATHERED, CAKED, with signifiers of authenticity -- overt allusions , sonic/lyrical/design etc, to street music, the subaltern, ghetto communities, guerrilla struggle, and then surrounded by a critical discourse that quite breezily took it as genuine street-level world music (something like that -- i forget the specific SFJ quote that pretty much set the tone for all later celebration of the artist)

and yet when a critic actually pays scrutiny to the very credentials that are being FRANTICALLY BRANDISHED by the artist and its label (all over new york right now there are posters advertising the album with the slogan 'pull up the people, pull up the poor') this is supposed to be an off-color (boom-boom) thing to do. an imposition of criteria and "pre-conceived notions" that could not possibly be more inappropriate and uncalled for.

here we have a pop artifact that is limned with all this stuff to do with race and class -- but if you discuss it in these terms that's what, somehow racially insentitive or inverted snobbery?

i would have thought pointing out that a record that makes like it's from the projects but is in actual fact an art project (that's what she calls it-- the MIA project), i would have thought that was a fairly salient point. i would have thought that would have been within the bounds of legitimate comment."


and I-go-where-no-Gringo-Goes Diplo has been getting his fair share of flak, if you ask me

 

[steve-k]

Here we go again....Oh no, an art school student using 'street' genres who is not properly authentic! Simon, lock her up. Actually, I found you more persuasive when you said how you liked the way the Slits utilized reggae. I think that's better than implying that noone who goes to artschool should be incorporating street genres. Maybe it's just a matter of semantics, but I don't think so. Should current artschoolers be limited to retro LCD Soundsystem-like approaches or generic indie-rock? Again, as I've said before, perhaps I'm reading too much into your criticism, but you seem, ala the 'well she can blog' comment, to be setting up rigid rules of your own for artists. And btw, I find the M.I.A. album a bit uneven musically.