Flipping the Other
November 18, 2013 10:49 AM Subscribe
"Choruses of children evoking a crowded slum, humid jungles where Sri Lankan women bathe and wash their clothes, old Bimmers drifting in a Moroccan desert, the multiple limbs of a Hindu goddess stretching behind her, the austerity of areas long occupied by military, a digital print burqa [...] Welcome to Worldtown."
-- Ayesha A. Siddiqi on the shamefully misrepresented "Pop Diaspora of M.I.A.", whose latest single from her new record Matangi is YALA (Flashing Lights Warning)
M.I.A. previously.
More essays on M.I.A.'s new record:
M.I.A.’s ‘Matangi’ Is A Defiantly Personal Reclamation of the Brown Girl Narrative
M.I.A.’s Matangi And Post-Colonial Politics
M.I.A. Dazzles, Confounds, and Infuriates Again and Again on 'Matangi'
matangi, noise, & self-determination
Matangi is 2013's most misunderstood album
M.I.A. previously.
More essays on M.I.A.'s new record:
M.I.A.’s ‘Matangi’ Is A Defiantly Personal Reclamation of the Brown Girl Narrative
M.I.A.’s Matangi And Post-Colonial Politics
M.I.A. Dazzles, Confounds, and Infuriates Again and Again on 'Matangi'
matangi, noise, & self-determination
Matangi is 2013's most misunderstood album
M.I.A. is interesting because she is from a fundamentally different background, with a unique perspective... and she does have catchy beats. But it seems a bit unfair for her to be expected to make anything more than a somewhat danceable, catchy pop album that reflects her background and influences.
I mean, do we really expect more from guys who create commercial pop albums? Do we expect more from Madonna or Kylie? Or does her having a different P.O.V. set our expectations unrealistically, somehow requiring her to be a fundamentally different artist / person everytime, or be judged as a culturally interesting fad, like a modern-day Carmen Miranda?
posted by markkraft at 11:21 AM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
I mean, do we really expect more from guys who create commercial pop albums? Do we expect more from Madonna or Kylie? Or does her having a different P.O.V. set our expectations unrealistically, somehow requiring her to be a fundamentally different artist / person everytime, or be judged as a culturally interesting fad, like a modern-day Carmen Miranda?
posted by markkraft at 11:21 AM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
I mean, do we really expect more from guys who create commercial pop albums? Do we expect more from Madonna or Kylie? Or does her having a different P.O.V. set our expectations unrealistically, somehow requiring her to be a fundamentally different artist / person everytime,
Depends on what you're listening for, I guess. I listened to some M.I.A., because she had something fresh and more than just another Kylie. Is it fair to expect more than Kylie? Well, I don't listen to Kylie, so for me 'doing as well as Kylie' type artist doesn't do it in the first place. M.I.A. decides to address a different market, that's fine, no harm no foul, it just drops off the radar for me personally.
Anyhow, I think we can agree that it's not mandatory for a commercial pop album to be 100% derivative and generic to find success, so that may be selling the artists a bit short in the expectations department. Throw a handful of well-worn tropes into a bag, shake it, and slap the name of the artist on it? Surely better can be done and has been done, and can still be a 'commercial pop album'.
posted by VikingSword at 11:41 AM on November 18, 2013
Depends on what you're listening for, I guess. I listened to some M.I.A., because she had something fresh and more than just another Kylie. Is it fair to expect more than Kylie? Well, I don't listen to Kylie, so for me 'doing as well as Kylie' type artist doesn't do it in the first place. M.I.A. decides to address a different market, that's fine, no harm no foul, it just drops off the radar for me personally.
Anyhow, I think we can agree that it's not mandatory for a commercial pop album to be 100% derivative and generic to find success, so that may be selling the artists a bit short in the expectations department. Throw a handful of well-worn tropes into a bag, shake it, and slap the name of the artist on it? Surely better can be done and has been done, and can still be a 'commercial pop album'.
posted by VikingSword at 11:41 AM on November 18, 2013
I hope someone Storified Siddiqi's recent tweets on MIA and the new album. Her off-the-cuff writing is witty and engaging, and especially so on this topic, so I'd hate to see it buried under the last week's material.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:41 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:41 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Those who can’t parse the iconography of diaspora assume the experience doesn’t exist. For the rest of us, M.I.A provides its soundtrack.
Siddiqi nails the root of some of the pleasure I get from listening to M.I.A. I don't always like all of her stuff, but the cheerful grab bag of South Asian-influenced music is really welcome to me. It's the Bollywood music I grew up with, the stuff playing on the speakers of the ethnic groceries I went to with my parents, the raucous mix of Middle Eastern and South Asian music played at family parties and weddings.
I like her music in much the same way I like Rihanna's music, in that it's catchy and poppy and I like listening to it in the car. But it also sounds like a familiar immigrant and diaspora experience to me, and I find it pretty thrilling to hear it in the mainstream.
posted by yasaman at 11:56 AM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]
Siddiqi nails the root of some of the pleasure I get from listening to M.I.A. I don't always like all of her stuff, but the cheerful grab bag of South Asian-influenced music is really welcome to me. It's the Bollywood music I grew up with, the stuff playing on the speakers of the ethnic groceries I went to with my parents, the raucous mix of Middle Eastern and South Asian music played at family parties and weddings.
I like her music in much the same way I like Rihanna's music, in that it's catchy and poppy and I like listening to it in the car. But it also sounds like a familiar immigrant and diaspora experience to me, and I find it pretty thrilling to hear it in the mainstream.
posted by yasaman at 11:56 AM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]
I just like that ever since The Streets (maybe way before The Streets actually) British hip hop artists (even sellouts like MIA just because she moved to the US, and yes that's sellout) haven't felt the need to try to rap in a fake Black English Vernacular. Canadian rappers of every colour should learn this- that's why I love Buck 65. He's from Nova Scotia and has never tried to "sound (American) black."
posted by ethnomethodologist at 11:58 AM on November 18, 2013
posted by ethnomethodologist at 11:58 AM on November 18, 2013
I considered making the fourth essay down "matangi, noise, & self-determination" by the infamous "someone on tumblr" the focus of this post instead, primarily because the opening really solidified the way most "rock guy" criticism of MIA's career misses a crucial point.
"In the opening line of the relatively straightforward, boom-bap interlude of M.I.A.’s newly released album, “Boom Skit”, Maya Arulpragasam spits, “Brown girl, brown girl, turn your shit down, you know our America don’t wanna hear your sound, boom boom, jungle music, go back to India…” While M.I.A., a British Sri-Lankan woman, has been making vaguely political indie-dance-rap for the past ten years, Matangi is graced with her birth name, and is the most sonically South Asian of any of her previous work. It is unapologetic in its self-definition in which people of varying cultural, linguistic, religious and political backgrounds are labeled as Arabs, Indians, Muslims or terrorists. Instead of banging her head against the wall in vain attempts to educate an uninterested white audience on the sexual and existential agency of pan-ethnic women of color, M.I.A. uses Matangi as a rallying point for women of color to revel in their otherness as a subversion and celebration of their self-definition despite the dominant Eurocentric discourse surrounding women of South Asia and the Middle East. With her most recent effort and its accompanying visuals, Arulpragasam offers a multicultural punk-rap album that muses on otherness, self-definition, feminism, and the political role of noise through the gaze of a woman of color."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
"In the opening line of the relatively straightforward, boom-bap interlude of M.I.A.’s newly released album, “Boom Skit”, Maya Arulpragasam spits, “Brown girl, brown girl, turn your shit down, you know our America don’t wanna hear your sound, boom boom, jungle music, go back to India…” While M.I.A., a British Sri-Lankan woman, has been making vaguely political indie-dance-rap for the past ten years, Matangi is graced with her birth name, and is the most sonically South Asian of any of her previous work. It is unapologetic in its self-definition in which people of varying cultural, linguistic, religious and political backgrounds are labeled as Arabs, Indians, Muslims or terrorists. Instead of banging her head against the wall in vain attempts to educate an uninterested white audience on the sexual and existential agency of pan-ethnic women of color, M.I.A. uses Matangi as a rallying point for women of color to revel in their otherness as a subversion and celebration of their self-definition despite the dominant Eurocentric discourse surrounding women of South Asia and the Middle East. With her most recent effort and its accompanying visuals, Arulpragasam offers a multicultural punk-rap album that muses on otherness, self-definition, feminism, and the political role of noise through the gaze of a woman of color."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:59 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yes, please tell me more about the former Mrs. Edgar Bronfman and the Brown Girl Narrative.
posted by docgonzo at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by docgonzo at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Edgar Bronfman Jr. would have been her father-in-law if she had married her fiance, Benjamin Bronfman, whom Wikipedia says she broke up with in 2012.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2013
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2013
And now the okie stylings of Robert Zimmerman.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:38 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:38 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
docgonzo: "Yes, please tell me more about the former Mrs. Edgar Bronfman and the Brown Girl Narrative."
Because real brown women don't marry whites?
posted by IAmBroom at 1:13 PM on November 18, 2013
Because real brown women don't marry whites?
posted by IAmBroom at 1:13 PM on November 18, 2013
Yes, please tell me more about the former Mrs. Edgar Bronfman and the Brown Girl Narrative.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
posted by yasaman at 1:35 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
posted by yasaman at 1:35 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Can you imagine if white guys had to defend their backgrounds as somehow justifying their musical abilities in the same way that non-whites do?
"Marky Ramone is actually named Marc? What is he FRENCH? Unlistenable."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:35 PM on November 18, 2013 [7 favorites]
"Marky Ramone is actually named Marc? What is he FRENCH? Unlistenable."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:35 PM on November 18, 2013 [7 favorites]
That guy packed a whole lot of wrong into sixteen words. Can we end this derail?
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:37 PM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:37 PM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
I'd rather argue about the music too but nobody seems willing to deny that it's her best record, and one of the best Hip Hop records of the year.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:39 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:39 PM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I like her music in much the same way I like Rihanna's music, in that it's catchy and poppy and I like listening to it in the car. But it also sounds like a familiar immigrant and diaspora experience to me, and I find it pretty thrilling to hear it in the mainstream.
I think this is why I like both MIA and Rihanna's music when it comes on the radio. Neither totally rocks my world, but at the same time both are complicated and self-aware, and blend together sounds and symbols that I enjoy. MIA especially seems to attract a certain kind of facile criticism that misses the point most offensively.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:52 PM on November 18, 2013
I think this is why I like both MIA and Rihanna's music when it comes on the radio. Neither totally rocks my world, but at the same time both are complicated and self-aware, and blend together sounds and symbols that I enjoy. MIA especially seems to attract a certain kind of facile criticism that misses the point most offensively.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:52 PM on November 18, 2013
TS Biggest beats/rhymes gap, MC division: M.I.A. or Timbaland?
Love, love, love her sound. But nearly every track has a wince-inducing clanger of a line, and I'm not even someone who cares all that much about lyrics in general. YALA is, like, more terrible lines per weight than decent ones.
posted by klangklangston at 4:01 PM on November 18, 2013
Love, love, love her sound. But nearly every track has a wince-inducing clanger of a line, and I'm not even someone who cares all that much about lyrics in general. YALA is, like, more terrible lines per weight than decent ones.
posted by klangklangston at 4:01 PM on November 18, 2013
"I mean, do we really expect more from guys who create commercial pop albums? Do we expect more from Madonna or Kylie? Or does her having a different P.O.V. set our expectations unrealistically, somehow requiring her to be a fundamentally different artist / person everytime, or be judged as a culturally interesting fad, like a modern-day Carmen Miranda?"
M.I.A. sets her sights higher, and generally succeeds. She works in an art and fashion millieu, and I think it's fair to judge her like that. Much more fair than dismissing her as a "modern-day Carmen Miranda," (which, jesus, sounds like you know neither all that well — a 13-year career with over 300 singles isn't just a passing fad, and M.I.A. will never be the highest-paid woman in America).
I think a fair comparison is Kanye West, who does a similar polyglot magpie pop with some pretty serious, interesting political and social themes. Though Kanye, despite early knocks, has turned into a serviceable rapper, if no GOAT.
posted by klangklangston at 4:08 PM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]
M.I.A. sets her sights higher, and generally succeeds. She works in an art and fashion millieu, and I think it's fair to judge her like that. Much more fair than dismissing her as a "modern-day Carmen Miranda," (which, jesus, sounds like you know neither all that well — a 13-year career with over 300 singles isn't just a passing fad, and M.I.A. will never be the highest-paid woman in America).
I think a fair comparison is Kanye West, who does a similar polyglot magpie pop with some pretty serious, interesting political and social themes. Though Kanye, despite early knocks, has turned into a serviceable rapper, if no GOAT.
posted by klangklangston at 4:08 PM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]
Really enjoyed this article, it put into words a lot of the frustration I've had with the various M.I.A. "takedowns" that have popped up here and there through the years.
posted by cell divide at 5:05 PM on November 18, 2013
posted by cell divide at 5:05 PM on November 18, 2013
I'd rather argue about the music too but nobody seems willing to deny that it's her best record, and one of the best Hip Hop records of the year.
I've loved each of her albums a little less than its predecessor, and so far this one seems to continue the pattern. It's the same problem I have with the new Kanye album - that whole stripped-down dissonant aesthetic really doesn't do it for me.
posted by STFUDonnie at 6:38 PM on November 18, 2013
I've loved each of her albums a little less than its predecessor, and so far this one seems to continue the pattern. It's the same problem I have with the new Kanye album - that whole stripped-down dissonant aesthetic really doesn't do it for me.
posted by STFUDonnie at 6:38 PM on November 18, 2013
"I'd rather argue about the music too but nobody seems willing to deny that it's her best record, and one of the best Hip Hop records of the year."
Over KALA? You are high in the face.
posted by klangklangston at 6:57 PM on November 18, 2013
Over KALA? You are high in the face.
posted by klangklangston at 6:57 PM on November 18, 2013
TS Biggest beats/rhymes gap, MC division: M.I.A. or Timbaland?
Tim escapes on a technicality--producers who rap are not MCs.
posted by box at 7:57 PM on November 18, 2013
Tim escapes on a technicality--producers who rap are not MCs.
posted by box at 7:57 PM on November 18, 2013
Kala has weak points. I was being overly provocative but still...this is a really really good record. I suggest everyone listen to all of it before dismissing it.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:07 AM on November 19, 2013
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:07 AM on November 19, 2013
This is my favourite album of this year.
And it's better than KALA.
It's easy to get stuck in the naivety of some of her rhymes or her politics, but there's an awesome London / UK aesthetic that for me, she just hits perfectly. Bring the Noize is joyful, high energy amazeballs.
I think she fits smoothly in with other artists that provoke equal amounts of rage/love from an aesthetically off-center artist.
She gets the same column inches of vitriol and worship as people like Amanda Palmer, Azaelia Banks, Arctic Monkeys, Jake Bugg and Kanye West because even the tastemakers can't decide if they like her or not.
I don't think she provokes the reaction she does because she's brown. (though the criticism she is given does tend towards the racist). I think she gets the reaction she gets because the intellectuals are divided as to her cultural worth.
posted by zoo at 7:52 AM on November 19, 2013
And it's better than KALA.
It's easy to get stuck in the naivety of some of her rhymes or her politics, but there's an awesome London / UK aesthetic that for me, she just hits perfectly. Bring the Noize is joyful, high energy amazeballs.
I think she fits smoothly in with other artists that provoke equal amounts of rage/love from an aesthetically off-center artist.
She gets the same column inches of vitriol and worship as people like Amanda Palmer, Azaelia Banks, Arctic Monkeys, Jake Bugg and Kanye West because even the tastemakers can't decide if they like her or not.
I don't think she provokes the reaction she does because she's brown. (though the criticism she is given does tend towards the racist). I think she gets the reaction she gets because the intellectuals are divided as to her cultural worth.
posted by zoo at 7:52 AM on November 19, 2013
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posted by VikingSword at 11:01 AM on November 18, 2013