 06/09/2007 She is the ideal definition of woman; beautiful, intelligent, artistic and funny. The embodiment of achievement against the odds. An Aphrodite of the 21st century, walking on shards of shattered electro vinyls, the odd grime beat and some tabla skins. 29 years within this mortal coil, neverendingly pinballing across the globe, Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam has been many things; refugee, visual artist, daughter of a rebel fighter, film-maker, musician, sister, rapper – she’s done the rounds. Her history has been well documented, almost to the point of tedium, but... there’s a bloody good reason for it. It’s interesting.
Her childhood spent bouncing between Sri Lanka, India and the (equally exotic) confines of a London council estate as her father fought as a Tamil activist instilled her with that fiery sense of reaction. Reaction against politics. Reaction against music norms. Reaction against gender definitions. It all bubbled over in her acclaimed, Mercury nominated debut ‘Arular.’ A hot bed of political sloganeering, base electro beats and sub-continent styles, it blew the lid off the British music industry. You could almost hear the sound of perplexed scalps being scratched in record label board rooms across London as the say-so-ers muttered to themselves: ‘How can this be so popular... it’s so weird! So unique!’
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Unique it was. The grime kids who had previously laughed at the funny trilbies of the indie lot (and vice versa... but with different headwear), now found themselves next to each other at her concerts. It managed to capture the attention of anyone who was excited about music; be it indie, pop, ‘lectro, rap, whatever... well... maybe not the metallers, who were all too busy sticking devil horns in the air and convincing each other they’re all really scary despite being skinny middle class white kids from the home counties.
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The question posed is: how do you follow up such a monumental and controversial album? Not one to shy away from a challenge – after all, this is a girl who only started making music four years ago at the insistence of Peaches – she has pulled out all the stops (literally). Despite hoping to move to New York, and actually renting a house, she was plagued by VISA problems, and eventually forced to record the album in Trinidad, India, Jamaica and various stops in between. It may have cost her the very valuable time of too-brilliant-to-bemortal producer Timbaland, but it’s left some amazingly eclectic results instead.
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‘I kinda just had to go and kill time because they didn’t let me into the States for ages,’ explains the singer, who is surprisingly shorter in the flesh than I’d imagined. ‘My whole creative process has been a waiting game determined by where I can go and where I can’t go.’
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 ‘I went to India because I knew it. I knew how to speak the language and I knew what I was going to get, so tracks came out of that. The sound came out of it. There was this one particular drum I wanted to use, so I recorded that and went to Trinidad. It seemed like a natural progression because they also have Indian music, and they understand it. Not that I deliberately wanted to do Indian music... but you see a culture that’s 2000 years old, then you see one that’s more modern, more intertwined with Jamaican culture, then you go see Jamaica. It’s progression...’—
New album ‘Kala’ is a melting pot of (dare I say it) ethnic sounds. It’s a collection of music distilled from her travels; a musical photo album. Some people might even use the dreaded words ‘world music,’ but all shaken up to sound strangely palatable for the pop hungry masses. There’s the tribal / temple drums of ‘Birdflu,’ equipped with chicken clucking samples and the sounds of Indian schoolgirls singing playground songs. Or the Aussie flavoured didgeridoo-laden ‘Down River.’ Or the track ‘$20’; surely the sound of Blue Monday coming down in a room with nothing else but a female Frank Black singing ‘Where Is My Mind,’ while playing Space Invaders.
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‘My main thing was to go to India, use their instruments, and make it not sound Indian,’ she says with the look of concentration across her face. ‘Even though everyone says my music is Bhangra, as well as grime, electro, hip hop or whatever, I never really thought it was. When I went to India, and I got there to see my mum, I realised how all their music progresses in that direction. Whatever you throw into the pot, they still digest it in a certain way. I wanted to flip that around to see if you could make, say, Baltimore Club using their drums. Because most of the time it’s always the other way round. So when I went there I tried to get the drummers to play Baltimore Club on these 2000 year old drum kits at the temple and shit... It was difficult. I achieved stage one; getting the sound of the drums down in the chaos of it, determining what they could play and what they couldn’t.’
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She continues: ‘I make music out of accidents completely. When I make music I have to make room for accidents and then it’s cool. For example, in [recent single] ‘Boyz,’ we were just reversing and flipping the drums. We had this drum pattern up and just, accidentally made a loop that skipped.’
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There’s a lot to ‘Kala.’ It’s a big step forward. Where the lyrics and immediacy of the debut had been the focus, here it’s on making meticulous music. This is a step away from the ‘hey-I’ve-just-discovered-how-to-make-songs-ona- drum-machine’ mantra, and a giant leap towards musical complexity and instrumentation. And that’s an expected repercussion when the only criticism levelled at her last effort from few sources was that it lacked musicality.
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‘I kinda wanted to think as a producer. On ‘Arular’ I was just grateful to have a record deal and be able to sing, and  everybody was able to help me and I didn’t give a shit. While doing ‘Arular’ I could tell everyone what I wanted to do, they came off as producers, but on this one I wanted to... come out. There’s more in production, and less about being controversial.’
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It’s difficult to have a message and still focus on art I guess? ‘Yeah, it’s fucked up,’ she replies with typical laconic prose, a slight smirk lifting the corner of her mouth. ‘It’s hard to do both. I didn’t want people to think I’m political, and expect that all my life. I was like ‘look, if I’m making this beat without a man in a 5 mile radius of this studio.... That’s a political statement.’’
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‘In 2002 and 2003 it was the peak of political stupidity and I wanted to make an album that just went ‘Arghh!’ and do that with the music as well. I was like ‘I don’t give a shit about music, this is how instant shit should be anyways.’ And then people said, ‘I don’t know if she’s actually musical, it’s all about what she says.’ No – I am fucking musical I just never had the opportunity or money to do that. Nobody ever bought me a guitar at 14, and I was never going to get one. It is just not part of how refugees fucking live. I was too busy trying to get an education so I can work at a petrol station.’
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Are you still politically motivated? She leans back quietly, thinking: ‘I think this whole shit with the VISA is about as political as it gets for me at the moment. I don’t want to give people the opportunity to twist stuff and do whatever. It’s something I really want to get into, but it’s not something I want to do as a musician. If you’re really into that shit, then you need to give your life to it. At least I’d like to give some time when I’m not thinking about fitting in touring, or flying back to do stuff. That’s gonna be what I do when I stop this and disappear.’
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Comparing ‘Kala’ to ‘Arular’ is inevitable. They live next to each other and represent totally different things, something reinforced by the fact that each was named after one of her parents. Where her debut album proper was a peon to her father, Arul, full of social commentary and revolutionary rhetoric, her sophomore album continues to reference her family’s roots, but this time her maternal branch, Kala. Talking about Maya’s political connections seemed inevitable with the release of Arular, and it cast an often uneasy shadow over the work, placing the focus on the internal controversy instead of the incredibe hooks that lay within.
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‘The last album was my father’s and I think [my mother] did a better job. They were both really competitive. His idea was to save the world, but hers was to save the family. They were always fighting about it.’
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‘My mum didn’t have that many opportunities. She comes from a little town in Jaffna, not educated past her O-levels, always doing minimum wage labour and she stayed at that level, but she wanted us to have a good education and do well and stuff like that. To me, it was always a thing not to be dependant with three kids. I wanted to stand on my own two feet. Making this record really meant that to me. Making ‘Arular’ I just made something – I said the things I wanted to say – and things happened because of it. I wasn’t thinking how to build myself a life out of it. On this one, it was difficult because I had to choose between being this tough chick, and being able to do that, and being strong, and growing into a role against being a ditzy chick that could marry some dude.’
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Do you find you have to balance the two; on the one hand being this strong willed, intelligent woman, and on the other, still being a woman with all the desires and needs that go with it? ‘Yeah, but men get really intimidated by that. You have to balance them, but it gets harder and harder, you know that. The more they achieve, it gets harder. Especially if you’re a creative girl. If you’re a creative guy, you just have some 20 year old chick lying about the place and you can say ‘Oh my god, whatever,’ know what I mean? If you’re a chick, it doesn’t work like that.’ It certainly doesn’t work like that if you’re a female muso with seasonings of hip hop to the repertoire. The criterion dictates it needs all be bitches, bling and gyrating stupidly on the top of hired out cars, not hiring 100 ‘Boyz’ to dance for you in your videos. Hip hop has lost the raw edge M.I.A promotes, in favour of a commercial formula for success.
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 Have you been put in positions where you’ve felt uncomfortable, where you’vefelt pressured into putting looks before music? ‘I’ve had situations where I’vegone into work with people and the first thing they’ve asked me to do is singabout sex. I always feel like if I was going to I would’ve done it already, andif I had, I would have done it a certain way. I don’t like that coming up first.You walk in and it’s like; woman, radio, sings about sex, gold. It is a bit of anAmerican mentality, but that’s in every genre; hip hop, pop, everything. Not somuch indie, but that’s why I feel comfortable being able to access every genre.’—
Did your parents get you into music at a young age? ‘Not really. My dad never listened to music, I didn’t really know him. I knew every single song from a movie, because my mum was really into movies. I’d watch any old crap; anything and everything. I had this Boney M tape which haunted me for about five years of my life. My uncle went to stay in Italy for a bit and he brought that tape back to the village. That tape went everywhere. He used to go and get drunk when I was five or six and come in at three in the morning. He’d throw the tape at me when I was asleep and tell me to ‘Go get up and dance for me now.’ He was really scary. I used to cry and dance around for him. I was known for being a bit of a dancer so he made me get up and dance for hours for his friends. He was really quite thuggy and he had a gang of dudes and used to get in real trouble. All of the Aunties would wait at the door. He did it as a joke, to make the dudes laugh, but he was a bully.’
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It sounds like family is important to you? ‘Yeah. The world moves so fast, with technology and everything, moving to New York you can go either way. You can have no time for shit like that, or go down this route. When you get the opportunity to stay in hotels, you can be who you want, shag who you want, duh duh duh duh duh. The more freedom and opportunities open up for me, the more I step backward and want something secure to hold on to. Only because I’ve never had it. I’ve never had a home my family’s owned. Even my mum lives in a council flat. It’s natural for me to want to alleviate that.’
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It’s an interesting and diverse life M.I.A’s lived. Resultantly, she’s certainly not lacking in any confidence. But there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Many may remember her edited speech at the 2005 Mercury Music awards. It did little but propagate her own high opinions of herself and how ‘like, totally real’ she is. Coming from anyone else, it would have been caustically cringeworthy, but with Maya, there’s the real feeling that she is totally herself... warts and all. And besides, that renowned melody dodger Johnny Borrell has been getting away with far higher levels of egotism for years without justified violent retribution. Today, she’s in top spirits and the preconceived cockiness I was expecting is completely vacant.
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She’s a true renaissance woman; from painting to movie-making, she’s been there. Having studied film at Central St Martin’s, music never really seemed a plausible ending. But strangely, it’s this visual background that has given her an indelible approach to beat-making. Where a highly studied lifelong musician may approach songwriting like some mathematical formula, Maya simply observes and does what feels right.
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‘I tell people I’m not really a musician, but it is my priority,’ she says. ‘I’m livingit out now. Everyday I wake up I have the choice to give it up and do whatever I want. But this is what I do and what I enjoy. When I do make music I think ‘If this were a film, how would I edit it?’ I do draw from other things. Being in art school, and having studied filmmaking, it’s really conditioned me. If you’re an artist or filmmaker you naturally become an observer. I’m not an exhibitionist or things like that. I’d rather sit in a corner and think about things. I care about my work...’
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Father versus mother. Politics versus art. Masculine versus feminine. Synthetic versus organic. M.I.A’s new album represents a lot of things. But all that really matters is that it’s a delight to listen to. In Maya we have a renaissance woman; someone so talented that no matter what she touches you know it’s going to be gold. We’re all just lucky enough the she has happened to turn her hand to music; something she’s travelled the world in order to create. It could well be a career highlight that will undoubtedly – and deservedly – send her into the pop stratosphere.
‘KALA’ IS OUT NOW (XL RECORDINGS) |
