Out with a Bang

Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, or M.I.A., as we know her has held nothing back when it comes to expressing her Sri Lankan roots as an English musician and artist. Though she was born in England, her family moved to a town called Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka when she was an infant and her father founded the political activist group, Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS) in an attempt to end discrimination against the Tamils. Maya's childhood was shadowed by the poverty and violence resulting from the Sri Lankan Civil War and her family was forced to relocate to England as refugees when she was ten years old. Being raised during such insubordinate circumstances had to have ignited Maya's desire to be the face of a new culture of South Asians.

Maya threw her energy and emotion into the arts and immersed herself in fashion, graphic design, and music. Her music floats across many genres, but M.I.A. is accepted as a hip hop artist. One of her songs that isn't quite as "hip hop" as the video is "Born Free."

This video was directed by Romain Gavras and depicts a world quite contradictory to the title of the track. American soldiers roll through an undisclosed city and barge into homes violently shooting and beating up civilians. They take red-heads captive and drive them out to an open field where they kill them. This is reflective of M.I.A.'s childhood in war-torn Sri Lanka and the red-heads as the oppressed group point out that in a world where anyone can be hated for their external characteristics or associating with a particular group means that anyone is subject to unnecessary violence. 

In this case, M.I.A. proves an excellent example of the logic of remix subculture. Sunaina Maira's "Identity Dub: The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth Subculture (New York Mix)" referenced the Birmingham theorists' idea that youth cultures can resolve tensions and mediate between their expectations of immigrant parents and the mainstream culture that imposes itself on the youth. M.I.A. takes it further with "Born Free" by transcending mediation between Sri Lanka and England and stating that the specific groups don't matter. It is the oppression and hate resulting from refusal to accept different groups that needs to end in order for our world to continue to globalize peacefully, which was essentially the message from hip hop's roots.

During this past year's Super Bowl halftime show, M.I.A., dressed in a Cleopatra-like getup, made another bold statement by flipping off millions of viewers during the performance. It is unclear as to her motives behind the action. Did she forget a peace sign requires two fingers? As with many rappers, her "Fuck you" attitude concealing much deeper, political messaging in her art and music provides the shock value effect and has brought South Indian presence to the world of hip hop for better or for worse.