ghetto postage

M.I.A. + Diplo - Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol.1

There's been quite a bit of buzz around this one so i figured i would throw in my two cents worth. This freely downloadable mix tape is a joint effort between DJ Diplo (who is one half of hollertronix and the hitherto unknown (at least in the music world, she has some filmmaking and fine art under her belt as a graduate of Goldsmith's College) Maya Arulpragasama, a.k.a. M.I.A. M.I.A. has designed record sleeves for elastica, and is apparently down with the london art scene, one dissensus member has described her as "one of the people you'd see at 'the' parties a couple of years ago". she's also an refugee from sri lanka, where as part of the tamil minority (to boot her old man was a member of the revolutionary tamil tigers organization) she was forced to leave with her family at the age of 10. diplo is a renowned DJ who spins all over the world and is famous for blending 80's pop songs with hip hop bangers...

... diplo's selections range from contemporary hip-hop (clipse's "definition of a roller", dead prez's "hip-hop") to a primers in dancehall history (cutty ranks - "limb by limb") to a bunch of rio baile funk. M.I.A.'s vocals abound. diplo does refixes of a bunch of M.I.A.'s vocals, ranging from upfront mashups ("sunshowers" vs. "push it") to more sly + subtle re-edits (at least a couple of her omnipresent "galang".) the mix offers up a little taste of M.I.A.'s upcoming album.

There's been loads of critical discourse surrounding M.I.A. up to this point. sasha-frere jones of the new yorker proclaimed M.I.A. as "actual on-the-ground world culture", positing M.I.A. as an alternative to the dry "world music" shelves at your local shop. the assumption being, of course, that M.I.A. is representative of what's happening in the parts of the world unbeknownst to the average first world listener, her music "a voice from a place where kids throw rocks at tanks, where people pull down walls with their bare hands. It could be the sound of a carnival, or a riot."

at the end of the day i have to deal with M.I.A. with a grain of salt for a few reasons. it seems she's (in the words of critic dave stelfox) "dining out" on world musics like dancehall. this is seen in her vocal style, which alludes to the exotic, but doesn't bear the stylistic idiosyncrasies of her purported influences. genres are made vital by specific tropes, things you can't get anywhere else, grime's verbosity and nimbleness, dancehall's creole, american hip-hop's easy bragadocio... simon reynolds once made a multiculture vs. monoculture analogy y with food that bears mentioning. it's like the difference between having a variety of distinct ethnic restaraunts to choose from or a bunch of "pan-asian" or "fusion" restaraunts. the latter often uffer up a brownish, unapattezing melange of the former, your favourite flavours combined to create something that bears none of what you liked about those flavours in the first place...

...i can't help but feel this way about M.I.A. she's kind of like a cypher, in which she can occupy any kind of "world music" role, be it grime/desi/dancehall/hip-hop, without really embodying those musics. (to the point where prominent grime DJ logan sama felt the need to address her being mis-labelled as grime on the internet by saying "This music, nor MIA have ANYTHING to do with Grimey Garage or that whole scene. So don't be confused into mis-representing the genre by including this in it. Cheers.") her "otherness" (semioticianspeak for something which stands in opposition to a cultural "norm") and therefore her credibility have been neatly constructed XL and the press, what with the emphasis on her tumultuous backstory (having to leave sri lanka on account of violence... and the resultant downplaying of the last ten years of her life which involve prestigious art schools, london high society + hanging around rock stars), her global credentials ("she visited jamaica, it's true!")and her lyrical emphasis on exotic tropes ("from the congo, to colombo", "somewhere in the amazon they're holding me ransom", "run with the elephant, run with the tiger", "my dad's a freedom fighter, dawg" etc.). nowhere is this more embodied than in the second section of "galang", in which the song breaks down and switches into a wordless vocal chant. the chant isn't from "here" (the first world), nor is it from "anywhere" else (a specific region). nor has the press taken any kind of interest in culturally placing that vocal, it's enough that it sounds exotic.

... which is another thing. i can't help but feel that the whole M.I.A. project is kind of an effort on the part of a large label to sell "world-y" sounding music to an audience that hasn't really pursued world music up to this point. you can't find any of M.I.A.'s singles at record shops that cater to the underground (play de record in toronto stocks tons of dancehall compilations, mixtapes and records but nary a M.I.A. record in sight). in london none of the shops that provide people with hip-hop, dancehall or garage material stock M.I.A. you'd have to go uptown to the more-indie-than-though rough trade shop, where conversely you can't find any dancehall, grime or hip-hop. from the decidedly non-street nature of her collaborators (richard x who produced for the sugababes, justine frischmann from elastica.) to the appropriation of the mixtape format (which underground artists SELL to support themselves because they don't have access to the studios necessary to cut proper tracks. in this case the mixtape was given out for FREE as part of an elaborate marketing scheme, diplo throws them out at shows while M.I.A. raps and dances. most artists can't afford to put out free work, it's very savvy when one has an impending major label release), to her less than magnaminous cultural ambition (M.I.A. confides in a recent interview that she want to be an alternative to norah jones, that she wants her music to be played in the most boring places imaginable) it seems like there is a massive push to make M.I.A. an overnight pop-star. the entire thing smells slightly of 'getting-it-wrong' on the part of the music press. instead of celebrating the diversity of regional forms on their own terms they've chosen to trumpet M.I.A. as this new kind of post-modern, post-global performer. (like how is it possible for world music to be manifested in one person's ouevre? isn't that a contradiction in terms?) not that i dislike pop music, i'm no grouch. but pop is the mere crystallization of more vital and subterranean cultural streams. and i think that ultimately it's those often neglected undergrounds that deserve the real attention...

so in short don't get it twisted.

M.I.A. is not grime/garage music. i've heard at least a few people in toronto ask if she is. she's not, as logan sama has attested. the reason you're associating her with grime is because she's from london and XL wants you to think that anything they have to do with is part of the underground. if you really want to hear grime music visit some of these websites:

rinse fm london's best pirate radio station
silverdollarcircle this fellow is a top london blogger who writes about grime
1xtra the bbc's website, check out cameo's show for all the latest tunes

or you can return to this site where you can hear grime sets and shit.

judging from what i've written you'd think that i detest M.I.A. and diplo. this isn't the case. i love diplo's dj'ing. he holds it down. likewise i enjoyed lots of the piracy funds terrorism mixtape. i'm just presenting a devil's advocate argument in the face of the massive hype surrounding this release. because when one is dealing with things like culture and authenticity it's important not to buy into things at face value.