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It’s hard to stay calm and matter-of-fact on Arular. To pretend that this is just one of the many CDs that hit stores every month.
On her debut, 27-year-old Londoner Maya Arulpraggasam, alias MIA, condensed the different cultural influences of her environment into songs that are aggressive and at the same time make you happy. This is how the liveliest, most vital and stirring music that can currently be heard in clubs was created.
MIA goes into a trance on almost every song
Stylistic references such as ragga, hip-hop, Indian drum dances and loud-quiet bands a la Pixies have been thoroughly decoded and completely reassembled. Dancefloor minimalism not as a frosty winter landscape, but as a steaming tropical jungle. A tiny sound gimmick peeks out behind every intricately drumming beat. Sometimes it whines, squeaks and tickles like in one of those trash film spaceships from the fifties. MIA raps, snorts and moans. Recurrently slips into a trance-like chanting, which may date back to Sri Lanka, where her father was a Tamil rebel leader who people called Arular.
With her music, MIA also sees herself as a fighter against globalized capitalism and its American stormtroopers. Seldom has criticism of the system been formulated so sensually and with so much passion as on MIA’s first single “Galang”. The refrain nevertheless shows pure joie de vivre, where others whine, complain, babble. Why isn’t this music played at every anti-globalization demo – or has it been for a long time? In any case, an indispensable record, not only for fans of Missy Elliot, Timbaland and Dizzee Rascal.
An article from the RS archive
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