1 Styling by: Cassie Machado Make-up by: Ozzie Salvatierra Hair by: Bailey
Gentle, William
M.I.A.
Issue #33
With big love for her mama and her signature punk approach to dance music, is she the modern girl next door or the most exciting thing since riot grrrl? We're convinced she's both.
By Anne-Marie Payne
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
M.I.A.’s pretty glorious. I mean, the back story alone puts bums on seats. Daughter of a Tamil Tiger — a Sri Lankan separatist group — M.I.A. (real name Maya Arulpragasam) spent her childhood hiding up gum trees in war zones before being shunted off, refugee-style, to the mean streets of Mitcham, South London. From there she discovered hip-hop and dancehall via the music blaring out of the windows on the council estate where she lived. At London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, she discovered indie music, made paintings and videos, and palled up with Justine Frischmann from Elastica. Frischmann took her on tour to video-document the experience, during which time M.I.A. hung out with support act Peaches, who introduced her to her buddy the Roland MC-505.
And the rest is history: neon-colored, near-indecipherable, jiggling, chanting, percussively explosive, critically adored, gorgeous history. Her 2005 debut, Arular (XL/Beggars) — named after her father — was short-listed for the U.K.’s prestigious Mercury award and was named number two in the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop Poll in 2005. M.I.A.’s new album, Kala, has proven to be one of 2007’s most anticipated follow-ups, with careful leaks of two tracks on her fan forum and MySpace page only serving to fan the flames of critical and blogospheric desire. Despite losing some of her debut’s incendiary references to war zones and terrorism, Kala’s even more out there than Arular. The challenge this time is in the music itself, which is rough, brilliant, and uncompromising. And, aw, it’s named after her mother. We caught up with M.I.A. in June at her label XL’s head office in West London to discuss politics, turning 30, the crisis of masculinity and — oh yeah — music.
It’s been two years since Arular, and you’re about to release your new record, Kala. How is the new record different from the first?
It feels ... contained. It’s less overtly political, but I feel as though politics are woven through the record on a number of levels. It’s got a real third-world feel — through circumstance as much as anything, because I was denied a visa to the U.S. for so long. The plan was to make lots of the record in the States, to work with Timbaland throughout. But my visa kept getting pushed back and pushed back, so I ended up making the record in India and Africa.
Why wouldn’t they give you a visa?
I don’t know! Eventually I was given a really short visa, and spent my time in the U.S. working with Timbaland and Black Star, but most of the record was about me wanting to find sounds that people hadn’t heard before. In India, I was surrounded by Bollywood music-makers, but I wanted to work with strange drummers from weird villages instead.
In what other ways is the record inherently political?
My thought on this album was more about becoming a producer in my own right, because not enough women try to do that. I decided that my ears were good enough to have opinions on music and put the stuff together myself. Not to mention the fact that the second men come within a five-mile radius of your work, they always go down as the ones that, like, made you.
Why the move away from more overt politics? Was it a conscious decision?
With Arular, I just made something that reflected my life at the time. Politics has always been around in my family. It’s in me … I have to talk about it. But I found politics really confusing because, while I have a little more attachment to it than the average person, because of my family, I still only knew about the same as the average civilian. And that was my whole point — I don’t have a degree in politics, and I don’t want to be a journalist working in Darfur, but I still want to talk about this. About how confusing it is to get such a limited amount of information from the media news. I knew I might get stick for being so outspoken, but I didn’t care. I went with wherever Arular took me and it took me here — to making another album. I’m not good to anyone going on about Sri Lanka and how to make life better for the people over there. But now, if someone questions my artistic integrity or my process or creativity or something, I can answer those things. I’ve spent the past year trying to be as good as the boys, trying to prove that you can produce your own music and be just as opinionated and strong as they can be. Right now, I’m locked into being a musician. That’s what evolution’s all about.
You were famously introduced to the Roland MC-505 by Peaches, and your earliest tracks were recorded very simply, with the 505, a four-track, and a radio mic ... which is a pretty punk thing to do, if you think about it. I’ve been thinking a lot about riot grrrl and its push to get more women into music, and was wondering how a similar process but with electronic music might work. Can you tell me, in the simplest possible terms, the process behind the creation of a track, from concept to completion?
Sure. On Arular, I used a beat machine, but I never read the manual. I’ve got manual phobia! So I was shown the five main processes — play or record, change the tempo, the arpeggio button, and the pitch and the patch. Then I just used those to write everything. With Kala the process was different, more organic. I went to India and used real drummers, locking them in a room and encouraging them to freestyle as much as they wanted to. In Indian music there are so many different structures — we use two scales; they use around 79, for example. I’d play the drummers certain things to take them into different areas. Once I had the sound files, I brought them all home and listened to them again. Then you take out the loops that you like, and you sit there, listening to all the different elements, and you start to fuse them together. It’s kind of like doing a painting. And at some point, the jigsaw just comes together, and then you’ve got it. I’ve got ADD, so whatever keeps my attention the longest, that’s what I go with.
Then you put the lyrics in? Do you use a notebook to write your lyrics, or do you improvise them?
This one, I didn’t pre-write anything. I had books there on the table, so once you’ve got it going you can write it down, but I didn’t have anything prewritten, it just comes to you. With “Boys,” I was doing the washing-up, and we had the beat on and it just came on and we sang it on the spot and it just happened so fast. If it clicks, it clicks within an hour. Then you don’t need to do anything to it.
What’s your relationship to feminism?
I have problems every day to do with that kind of stuff, but I try not to make it into an issue because I don’t want anybody to think they can shut me down on that note. It’d be easy for men to say, “Whatever, she’s a feminist, she’s always going to react like that,” and I don’t want anybody to think that they can always predict what I’m going to say based on that. I want to be able to pick my battles.
Elsewhere you’ve described Kala as a more ‘feminine’ album than Arular.
You know, I called this album Kala after my mother, because I believe in what she stood for, and how hard it was for her. I see these girls in London come out of their jobs at 5, 6, 7 p.m., and I think, “Wow, how do you motivate yourself to do that, like my mum did … to come home from a boring job, feed your kids, and keep going?” You don’t even get proper, old-school love anymore. It’s not like the old days when men were men and they knew how to love women and make them feel good. No one really knows how to do that anymore. The men are really selfish, and we date, and we shag, and we do all these things that are so “modern,” but you never really have the classic sense of support and family. It must be so awful not to have the option to get out of that scenario of kids, job — the single-parent mum trap. You’re locked in for life, and men don’t have that, because they just leave. Men these days, they’re so quick to … they say they just want to be free for as long as possible. They want to be free to shag for as long as they can shag, into their 70s, or whatever. But women, we don’t share that sense of freedom, because we’ve got other shit going on.
Do you think we’re seeing an end to traditional monogamy?
Yeah ...
Couldn’t that be a good thing, though? Women no longer need to depend on men for financial security. They can choose to raise a child alone if they want, choose who they want to be with.
Yeah, that’s good. That’s the good side of modern life. You can have 10 babies from 10 baby daddies if you want, one in every color, and live quite happily! But my mother did it without a choice. It’s the choice that’s the important thing. I have the option to be an ambitious woman, a successful businesswoman — anything. And I also have the option to be a wife and a mother, and that’s wonderful. But I don’t know how any woman can do all of it.
You’ve just turned 30. How was that transition for you?
It’s not a big deal for me, but it is for my family. It’s a big thing in Sri Lankan culture. Everyone’s saying, “Shouldn’t you be married by now?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m kind of busy.” They say, “What’s wrong — are you a drug addict? Is that why you’re not married?” They just don’t get it. I don’t know of any other Sri Lankans that do this — write songs, go on tour. I tell them they have to let go of that dream of me being the ultimate Sri Lankan chick, because it ain’t gonna happen.
Do you feel yourself changing at all? What did you do when you were younger that you don’t do now?
When you’re young, I think you’re a lot harsher. On the one hand, I was more open, more of a humanitarian, but on the other, I was so harsh with it. I’d be like, “Grrrr” at everything — just getting mad and being really opinionated and wanting change now and stuff like that. Now, I realize that you have to start change here, from your doorstep. It might not be immediate. Now I’m more into how to help people in the long run. I sit with people in Sri Lanka and I think, “OK, I could make everyone feel really good right now, and take everyone to eat, and buy them shoes, or I could help them long term.” Before, if I had money I’d be really generous and affect people that day — but now I’m trying to think long term. And that’s a real change.
Grime’s often cited as a real influence on your sound, and also dancehall — but I was wondering what, if any, influence the indie scene has had on your work? You were friends with Justine from Elastica.
I didn’t know about indie ‘til I was at college. I grew up with dancehall and hip-hop. I liked the lyrics of indie music; they were so cool, different from the topics hip-hop always covered. I guess for me, what indie’s done has given me a real “If you don’t like it, fuck you” feeling to what I’m doing. I go wherever I can, experimenting as much as I want. That’s pretty independent. But at the moment indie is sounding a bit pretty ... it’s annoying. It’s not punkish enough!
Who are your current musical crushes?
I find what Hadouken! are doing to be pretty interesting, mixing it up as they do. I was watching some Look Look (dancing boys) videos on YouTube as well — they’re good, these two girls with songs called things like “Tit Wank,” with lots of screaming. And I really like SoKo. That’s a boy and a girl on acoustic guitar. I like what she’s saying in the song — she’s this psycho nut girl, but she sings like she’s really vulnerable. Their first song’s all about how a guy left her for this model chick and she’s going to find her and kill her. And the lyrics are amazing ... really stalkery, really menacing, really honest.
And that’s what music should be about right now. Songs should reflect a train of thought, whether that’s me pushing the beats on Kala, or SoKo being really scary and revealing everything in this stream-of-consciousness way. Nowadays it shouldn’t be about making “proper” songs. It should be about taking an idea and then pushing it as far as it will go.
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