Salman Rushdie criticised Danny Boyle’s Oscar winning movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ on the grounds that it lacked plausibility. He’s obviously sensitive to the fact that the poverty in India is used as a convenient backdrop rather than attempting to carry any overt social or political message. But I think he’s underestimating the fact that the movie presents the sinister and squalid aspects of life in the slums of India when it would have been quite easy to prettify these scenes. Continue reading
Gwen Stefani’s skewed cheerleader chart hit ‘Hollerback Girl’ from 2004 was one of my guilty pleasures of that year. I loved the jerky rhythms and the semi jibberish of the lyrics (“It’s bananas!”). Great pop music in my book.
Now, the restless energy that fired this single is evident in the somewhat more street cred shape of Mathang ‘Maya’ Arulpragasm thankfully better known as MIA. She was born in London but planet hopped as the daughter of Sri Lankan political refugees, a fact evident in what she calls the “4th generation immigrant travel stuff” of her second album Kala just released on XL Recordings.
Of all the global locations referenced on the album, India is probably the most obvious non-Western one. That country’s Bollywood tradition feeds into what overall amounts to a kaleidoscopic global celebration of pop culture. It’s the type of high energy hip-hop that I’m sure the Cassady sisters would have loved to emulate as CocoRosie. The stark contrast between ‘Kala’ and the pretentiousness of ‘The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn’ is plain to hear.
MIA makes full use of digital technology but this is machine music with a heart, a mechanized sound that represents a display of choice rather than a decay of taste. It’s a brash and audacious statement of intent which shamelessly snatches and redeploys, among others, samples from Jonathan Richman’s ‘Roadrunner’, The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind’ and The Clash’s ‘Straight to Hell’. The resulting mash-up is a tad bananas but so smart and sassy that she pulls it off with style.
Despite the line on Paper Planes “All I want to do is take your money” Kala seems less concerned with product placement and more inspired with the desire to show some attitude.
You can see and hear MIA performing tracks off this album on KCRW’s ‘Morning Becomes Eclectic’ .
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