M.I.A. - Maya ArulparagasamM.I.A.-ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR MUSICIANS IN THE WORLD TODAY.

M.I.A.

ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR MUSICIANS IN THE WORLD TODAY.
THE BEST RECORD - PAPER PLANES. YOU TUBE 29 MILLION VIEWERS IN ONE YEAR AN ALL TIME RECORD.
BEST PICTURE -SLUM DOG MILLIONAIRE ALSO INCLUDED "PAPER PLANES" AND THE THEME SONG.

LINKS: http://www.tamilnation.org/diaspora/unitedkingdom/mia.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sei-eEjy4g -PAPER PLANES:

Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam
M.I.A. (Missing in Acton )

M.I.A. - Maya ArulparagasamM.I.A. Maya Arulpragasam

"People don't realize that I had to come from a village in Sri Lanka to get here. So the journey is about the journey itself, not just about doing music... Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked...I haven't heard honesty in music for so long and this is how I feel, and this is what I think. You don't even have to say words.. I was just being as raw as possible. I wanted to make music that you felt in your gut.... You can't separate the world into two parts like that, good and evil. Terrorism is a method. But America has successfully tied all these pockets of independence struggles, revolutions and extremists into one big notion of terrorism. You can't grab someone by the neck and choke them and then complain they're kicking you. If you're going around oppressing people, they will fight back..."

"My problem is that politics is the first thing that defines who I am. It's like, "You're just The Other, you're this thing. You have evil thoughts about the world." When I watch President Bush on the telly going, we need to fight the axis of evil and kill these terrorists by all means necessary, I just go, "Shit, poor Dad." In the 70s all Dad wanted to do was be a revolutionary like Bob Dylan. He had idealistic views about changing the world for the better and fighting for people who don't have a voice - the same thing that Bob Dylan wanted to do. Now, he's like this straight-up, evil terrorist; a gunned masked man with a semi-automatic ready to take down and behead people. " [see also "You Can't Lump All Terrorists Together" - Hillary Clinton, 23 October 2007 and On Terrorism & Liberation - Nadesan Satyendra, 23 September 2006]

Early Life Studying Art and Film Music Beginnings Censorship 2006

Tiger, tiger, burning bright: Tamil pop provocatrice M.I.A. wages war on the dance floor, - Joshua Ostroff

US Locks Out M.I.A., June 2006 MIA gets visa to US & performs in Los Angeles - July 2007 "I lost my voice in L.A. but I'll do my best because it's been a long f***ing wait to get here.."

The Songs with Lyrics: Ba-na-na Skit Pull Up the People Bucky Done Gun Sunshowers Fire, Fire Dash The Curry Skit Amazon Bingo Hombre 10 Dollar URAQT Galang Bamboo Banga BirdFlu Boyz Jimmy Hussel Mango Pickle Down River 20 Dollar World Town The Turn XR2 Paper Planes Come Around Far Far Big Branch What I Got

Early life
Maya Arulpragasam - M.I.AMathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, the daughter of a Tamil activist-turned-revolutionary-guerrilla, Arul Pragasam, was born in Hounslow, London. When she was six months old, her family moved back to their native Sri Lanka. Motivated by his wish to support the Tamil efforts to win independence from the majority Sinhalese population, her father became politically known as Arular and was a founding member of The Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), a militant Tamil group. Her alias, "M.I.A." stands for "Missing in Acton". She says her alias references both her London neighborhood (Acton) and her politically tumultuous youth.

While residing in Sri Lanka, Maya lived with her family on her grandparents' remote farm, a collection of huts without electricity or running water. After a year, as her father's involvement in militant activities increased, Maya, her older sister Kali, and their mother moved to Jaffna in the far north of the country, where Maya's younger brother Sugu was born.
Contact with her father was strictly limited, as he was in hiding from the Sri Lankan Army (which is reported to engage in the torture of Tamil males). He occasionally visited in secret, slipping through the window at night and being introduced to the children as "an uncle" so that his identity and whereabouts would not be given away to the army when they regularly came to question the family.

Eventually, as the civil war escalated, it became unsafe for the family to stay in Sri Lanka, so they were forced to relocate to Madras, India. They moved into an almost derelict house three and a half miles from the nearest road or neighbour. They survived there for a while, with sporadic visits from Arular, and the girls attended the local school, excelling as students. However, visits from friends and family grew less frequent and money grew very tight. The children became ill; Kali caught typhoid fever and the family struggled to survive on a limited amount of food and water. A visiting uncle took concern and moved them back to Sri Lanka, where they settled in Jaffna again.

By now, the violence of the civil war was at its peak, and the family once again tried to flee the country. The army regularly shot Tamils seeking to move across border areas and bombed roads and escape routes. After several failed attempts to leave, Maya’s mother successfully made it out with the three children, arriving first in India before finally returning to Maya's birthplace in London, where they were housed as refugees.

It was in the late 80s, on a council estate in Mitcham, Surrey, that an eleven-year-old Arulpragasam began to learn the English language. Here she was exposed to Western radio for the first time, hearing broadcasts emanating from her neighbours' flats. Her affinity for hip-hop and rap began from there. The uncompromising attitudes of Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, Roxanne Shante and N.W.A. clicked with a frustrated, energetic war-child trying to relate to grey and foreign surroundings. "Those records were rhythmic, so whether you understood the language or not, you could understand the music," she now says.
Studying Art and Film

M.I.A. Maya Arulpragasam
Maya was a talented and creative student, eventually winning a place at London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where she studied fine art, film and video. Here, for the first time, she began to piece together some of the different strands of her life experience. In an early incarnation of what was later to become M.I.A., she learned how to play off her different cultural personae against each other; layering rap iconography with the warfare pictures from her youth, Asian Britain with American new-wave film making style and St. Martin's fashion sense with refugee outlooks.

A successful art career beckoned and, for a while, seemed to be Maya's destined path. Her first-ever public exhibition of paintings in 2001 at the Euphoria Shop in Portobello, London, featured candy coloured spray-paint and stencil pictures of the Tamil rebellion movement. Graffitied tigers and palm trees mixed with orange, green and pink camouflage, bombs, guns and freedom fighters on chip board off-cuts and canvases. The show was nominated for the Alternative Turner Prize, every painting sold (Jude Law is a patron of her art) and a monograph book of the collection was published by Pocko (which was simply entitled M.I.A.).

The Publication's back cover reads: "From a long-forgotten region of endemic conflict comes a project to challenge your ethical core. The art of warfare is sprawled across these pages transforming bloodshed into beauty and raising the phoenix of forbidden expression - The real war is in us."
Music Beginnings
A commission from Elastica's Justine Frischmann to provide the artwork and cover image for the band's second album, The Menace, led to Arulpragasam following the band on tour around forty American states, video-documenting the event, and eventually directing the music video for Elastica's single, "Mad Dog".
The support act on the tour, electro-clash artist Peaches, introduced Arulpragasam to the Roland MC-505 sequencing machine and gave her the courage to take on the one artform she felt least confident in: music.
Back home in London, Arulpragasam and Frischmann got hold of their own 505 and, working with the simplest of set-ups (a second-hand 4-track, the 505 and a radio microphone), Arulpragasam worked-up a series of six songs onto a demo tape which became her calling card to the industry.
This tape included the first track she had ever composed, "M.I.A.", the second track she had ever composed, "Galang", and " Lady Killer". The tape found its way into the hands of Steve Mackey and Ross Orton who then re-worked the track "Galang" into the diverse meld of influences that would eventually propel M.I.A. into the limelight.

An innovative recipe of dancehall, electro, grime and world music, Showbiz Records only pressed 500 copies of the independent vinyl single "Galang", but that was enough for her to win the widespread and immediate support of DJ's and the media.
Numerous major record labels caught onto the underground success of "Galang" and M.I.A. eventually signed to XL Recordings home to Dizzee Rascal, Basement Jaxx and the White Stripes, embracing them as they were the only label to offer her complete creative control. She also chose them because it was the closest to her house, telling the label, "Trust me, you've been looking for me", before dropping off the "Galang" tape. They called her back 20 minutes later.

"Galang" was rereleased. The accompanying music video for "Galang", featuring multiple M.I.A.’s amid a backdrop of her graffiti artwork animated and brought to life, was directed by Ruben Fleischer and art directed by M.I.A. herself. Scenes of urban Britain and the war in Sri Lanka are depicted and delivered with a wry sense of humour.

For her next single release, "Sunshowers", Arulpragasam again hooked up with Ross Orton and Steve Mackey who had furnished her so successfully with the beats on "Galang". Together they pushed boundaries even further with minimalist production and a reworked chorus from Dr. Buzzards Original Savannah Band’s track of the same name to create a template for her to fire out her young-girl bravado, this time about guerrilla warfare and the Sri Lankan war.
A lush video was made for the track, which she filmed in the jungles of South India with acclaimed director Rajesh Touchriver. To this day, MTV refuses to play the video until the references to the Palestine Liberation Organization are removed from the song. Maya refuses to comply with their requests (although she has recently appeared on an MTV Live spot online where this reference is uncensored).

On the heels of months of anticipation, Arulpragasam’s debut album Arular was finally released in March 2005 in North America, and was simultaneously released around the world to widespread critical acclaim. M.I.A. followed the release of the album with strongly received performances at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on May 1, 2005, at the Manhattan club S.O.B.s, as well as at New York City's Central Park Summerstage, the Glastonbury Festival and Japan's Summer Sonic Fest.

On July 19, 2005, M.I.A was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize for Arular. In December, 2005, Arular was named number 1 album of the year by Stylus Magazine' and influential music website I Love Music. Amazon.com named it their number 2 album of the year. Spin Magazine and URB named M.I.A. their artist of the year for 2005. Blender Magazine named Arular the album of the year for 2005. Rolling Stone named Arular one of the top albums of 2005. TIME Magazine also listed Arular as one of the top 10 best albums released in 2005 as part of their "Best of 2005" section. Influential indie music site Pitchfork Media (www.pitchforkmedia.com ) named Arular the #4 best album of 2005.
Censorship
The nature of M.I.A.'s art work and lyrics has led to increased curiosity into her career and levels of censorship of her work. M.I.A.'s official website has been visited by a curious US Government numerous times, MTV still refuses to play the video of her single "Sunshowers" until references to the PLO are removed from the song, and recently the artist was denied a visa to enter America, despite having previously lived and worked in the country.
The reasons for the denial of a visa remain unclear. M.I.A. has however previously stated in an interview about censorship of her work: "From Day One, this has been a mad, crazy thing: I say the things I'm not supposed to say, I look wrong, my music doesn't sound comfortable for any radio stations or genres, people are having issues with my videos when they're not rude or explicit or crazy controversial. I find it all really funny."
2006
M.I.A. ended 2005 embarking on her first North American concert tour, joining Gwen Stefani on her Harajuku Lovers Tour. The arrival of 2006 saw her performing her final arena dates of the tour in Japan, and returning to the studio to work on her upcoming album. At the end of May 2006, Arulpragasam hosted the long running Australian alternative music show Rage as a guest programmer. The show was very well received.
So far, Maya has recorded in Tamil Nadu and Trinidad and Tobago for her next album, and a few tracks were originally going to be produced by the legendary Timbaland, who has produced songs for the likes of Jay-Z, Missy Elliott and Xzibit. However, according to a recent message board posting by Diplo, M.I.A. will be producing her new album all by herself, and has funded the music video for the lead single, "Bird Flu", herself. Images from behind the scenes on the production of this new music video have been released on M.I.A.'s myspace account. M.I.A. is also working with Oscar-winners Three 6 Mafia on two songs for her next album. Two new tracks, "XR2" and "Talk About Moi" (tentative title) have premiered on M.I.A.'s myspace and fan forum site, respectively.

[The text of the above article is from Wikepedia and is published here under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.]

Tiger, tiger, burning bright: Tamil pop provocatrice M.I.A. wages war on the dancefloor Courtesy: Joshua Ostroff in Eyeweekly, 27 January 2005


"Freedom fighting Dad bombed this pad / Called him a terror put him on wanted ads / Daddy M.I.A. missing in action / Going to start a revolution" -- M.I.A. "FREEDOM SKIT"

Maya ArulpragasamMore than three years into his amorphous War on Terror, President G-Dub is now apparently prepping a drive-by on tyranny, telling the world's stepped-on in his inaugural harangue, "The United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors." Nice thought and all, if we didn't know how many people tend to die during Bush's freedom-izing.
Not to mention that, when dealing with the oppressed, the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter is often subjective. Just ask Maya Arulpragasam, a London-based MC bearing the nom de guerre M.I.A. and a new album, Arular (XL/Beggars Banquet), on which she ably navigates a claustrophobic global sound clash while dropping political science.

She grew up in civil-war torn Sri Lanka -- a 22-year conflict that's killed 65,000, currently under an uneasy ceasefire -- as the daughter of one of the founders of the Tamil Tigers, a guerrilla organization that has been classified as terrorists by the US government and accused of recruiting child soldiers by UNICEF.

"That's why I wrote the song 'Sunshowers,'" Maya says over the phone from Berlin before a gig. "You can't separate the world into two parts like that, good and evil. Terrorism is a method. But America has successfully tied all these pockets of independent struggles, revolutions and extremists into one big notion of terrorism."

The "Sunshowers" single -- her second after career-definer "Galang" and riding the same jolting mash of electro, grime, ragga, rap and South Asian influences -- contains more inflammatory politics than one might expect on a dance track that's available as a ringtone and has soundtracked fashion shows.

Most brazenly, she shout-outs the Palestinians ("Like P.L.O., we don't surrend-o") but also sprinkles guerrilla imagery like she salts and peppers her mango, chatting about snipers, bomb blasts and street-side murders. The India-filmed video replaces hip-hop's familiar housing-project backdrop with a lush, tiger-filled jungle through which M.I.A. stalks, and even the sweetly sung chorus, interpolated from a similarly-named '70s single, takes a threatening turn in Maya's hands: "And some showers I'll be aiming at you / 'Cause I'm watching you, my baby."

Not surprisingly, MTV has requested she clarify the song with a statement before they'll screen the video.

"My answer to that is that when you watch TV and flick onto the news channel, that's what's shown and they don't have to censor that," Maya says. "I wrote this song as a chicken-and-egg story: who's attacking who, who is good, who is evil. You can't grab someone by the neck and choke them and then complain they're kicking you. If you're going around oppressing people, they will fight back."

To put M.I.A.'s perspective into perspective, she was born in England but brought back to Sri Lanka as a baby when her father returned to help lead the independence movement, spending her childhood hiding amid the chaos of the "full-on" conflict.

"I'd seen people die by the time I left," she says. "That's as bad as it could get, when you see people from your village disappearing and not coming back. One minute they're doctors and really respected and the next they're in wheelchairs because they've been 'accidentally' shot. My school was burned down. My family's house was burned down. When we tried to leave Sri Lanka with my mom, the buses we were on would get stopped in the middle of nowhere and people would be taken off and killed. It teaches you how bad human beings can be."

That lesson was further elucidated after her family escaped to England as refugees and landed in a racist housing estate. The 11-year-old soon discovered dancehall and hip-hop, slowly learning the English words, inflections and cadences that would form her flow.

But Maya only started making music in 2002, taking a serendipitous path that began when she was an art student, known for combining Tamil Tiger imagery with graffiti. This led to designing the album cover for Elastica's 2000 album The Menace, followed by a gig videotaping their subsequent tour. The opening act was Toronto's electro-expat Peaches, who kindly taught Maya how to build beats on a primitive groovebox.

"We did a night in Toronto and I got to meet all of [Peaches'] friends and they seemed so open-minded and creative," she says. "I was having issues on the tour making that film. I was constantly talking out what was happening in Sri Lanka because I had just heard news that my cousin had died [in a suicide bombing] and everybody I met through Peaches said if you really feel that strongly you should do something about it."

So Maya bought a Roland 505, and, like her seamstress mother, began stitching together her patchwork of First and Third World influences.

Though "Galang" skyrocketed M.I.A. to cult fame -- saturating MP3 blogs, winning DJ hearts and scoring a pre-emptive Fader magazine cover last summer -- it also demonstrates a remarkable restraint. As startling as the decomposing handclaps, sub-lo-fi bass and nursery rhyme toasting may be, it's not until the final breakdown that the song earns its rep. After demanding that we "speak the slang now" she suddenly gives up on language altogether, with multi-tracked M.I.A.s chanting fiercely resonant "ya ya heys" that transform the song into a tribal exultation.

"They were like my batman signal," Maya says. "I haven't heard honesty in music for so long and this is how I feel, and this is what I think. You don't even have to say words," she explains. "I was just being as raw as possible. I wanted to make music that you felt in your gut."
Following up her fantastic hard-to-find mix disc, Piracy Funds Terrorism with Philly DJ Diplo, and titled after her father's rebel name, Arular is a fully formed manifesto, equal parts jaw-dropping intensity and hip-quaking catchiness, clattering sonics and scattered polemics. With production assists from Steve Mackey (Pulp), Ross Orton (Fat Truckers) and Richard X, she brings in more battleground back story on "Fire Fire," augments a home-invasion intro with Olympic horns on "Bucky Done Gun," is kidnapped on "Amazon" and reps oppressed folk from Kingston to Rio on "Pull Up the People."

While her dirty beats, inimitable sing-rap style (combining girlish glee with intimidating patter) and stunning looks should be enough to make M.I.A. a pop star, her aspirations go further. But can politically fuelled dance music even hope to make any discernable difference in this terror-era?

"I don't know," Maya says mischievously. "Let's find out."
US Locks Out M.I.A. 14 June 2006
"As if hip-hop didn’t already have enough on its shoulders, now immigration officials are treating MCs like terrorists. The June 15th issue of Rolling Stone reports that British/Sri Lankan rapper MIA was denied permission to enter the US, where she was scheduled to start work on her new album. Always one to poke fun at the situation, the MC wrote on her Myspace page: “Roger, roger do you hear me? Over!!!! The US immigration won’t let me in… Now I’m strictly making my album outside the borders!!!” MIA’s agents, William Morris, later denied the claim, saying that immigration simply hadn’t gotten back to them (a nice way of saying her application has been “held up”). The controversy over all this is a bit confusing since MIA already toured and worked in the US as recently as last year.
But under all the damage control coming from her agents, there’s the possibility of something a bit more calculated -- and all too common in the climate of the war on terror and an anti-immigrant backlash MIA (born Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam) is part of a growing number of politically charged artists.
Her lyrics, delivered with a streetwise intelligence, take on everything from consumerism and poverty to exploitation and war. She’s unabashedly outspoken, and a supporter of liberation movements around the world. Her audience has quickly grown within the past year, and her debut was named one of the best album of 2005 by Blender, Spin, Rolling Stone and a handful of others. As usual, militant stances and a wide audience are a dangerous recipe for some. " more
MIA gets visa to US & performs in Los Angeles - July 2007
"I lost my voice in L.A. but I'll do my best because it's been a long f***ing wait to get here.."

M.I.A. Maya Arulpragasam
Maya Arulpragasam M.I.A. Album - * Arular
* indicates link to Amazon.com online

Arular - M.I.A.
Arular at amazon.com

"..M.I.A.'s debut record is both intensely urban and aggressively modern. The group's sole member, Maya Arul, infuses her blend of hip-hop and chunky electro with raw, tribal overtones and a healthy dose of sex appeal. There are elements of world music here, in Arul's multilingual vocal as well as the tonal shifts and instrumentation (like the drone that opens up "Hombre")... Review at Amazon.com

Songs 1. Ba-na-na Skit 2. Pull Up the People 3. Bucky Done Gun 4. Sunshowers 5. Fire, Fire 6. Dash The Curry Skit 7. Amazon 8. Bingo 9. Hombre 10. One For The Head Skit 11. 10 Dollar 12. URAQT 13. Galang

1. Arular: Ba-na-na Skit M.I.A. Maya Mathangi Arulpragasamdum shella
Refugee education number one
here we go

Banana
ba-na-na
say it again now
ba-na-na
say it again now
ba-na-na
na-na
ba-na-na
say it again now
ba-na-na
say it again now
ba-na-na
say it again now
get yourself an education
2. Arular: Pull Up The People At You Tube - Live on Stage
M.I.A. Maya ArulpragasamPull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the poor, pull up the poor

Slang tang
That's the M.I.A. thang
I've got the bombs to make you blow
I got the beats to make it bang
[X2]

Yeah,me got God and me got you
Every day thinking bout how me get through
Everything i own is on I.O.U.
But i'm here to bringing you
Someting new

You no like the people,they no like you
Then they go and set it off
With a big Boom
Every gun in a battle is a
Son and daughter too

So why you wanna talk about
Who done who?
Why you wanna talk about

Slang tang
That's the M.I.A. tang
I've got the bombs to make you blow
I got the beats to make it bang
[X2]

Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the people, pull up the poor
Pull up the poor, pull up the poor

I'm a fighter, fighter God
I'm a soldier on that road
I'm a fighter, a nice nice fighter
I'm a soldier on that road
You can bring me the reaper
Bring me the lawyer
I'm a fighter, i'll take em on
You treat me like a killer
I ain't hate ya.

I'm a fighter, fighter God
I'm a soldier on that road
I'm a fighter, a nice nice fighter
I'm a soldier on that road

Slang tang
That's the M.I.A. thang
I've got the bombs to make you blow
I got the beats to make it bang bang bang

Slang tang
That's the M.I.A. thang
I've got the bombs to make you blow
I got the beats to make it

Slang tang
That's the M.I.A. thang
I've got the bombs to make you blow
I got the beats to make it bang bang bang

Slang tang
That's the M.I.A. thang
I've got the bombs to make you blow
I got the beats to make it bang