Arguably Sri Lanka's best rapper (one of the many out there...), M.I.A. (born Mathangi Arulpragasam and referred to as "Maya"), started off in the US with the infectious beat of "Galang" in 2005, and received huge critical acclaim for last year's Kala, featuring the singles "Paper Planes", "Boyz", and "Jimmy". Her last show of her current tour was at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee, in June; she cancelled the rest of her shows due to exhaustion.
The Sri Lankan Tamils are an ethnic group making up about 2 million people of the Sri Lankan island. Believers of Tamil nationalism hold the feeling that they should have the right to secede from Sri Lanka, something that originated during the time of the country's British rule. The Liberation tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the Tamil Tigers, are an organization headed by Velupillai Prabhakaran (or Pirapaharan, transliterations vary), who is wanted by Interpol for terrorism, murder, organized crime, and terrorism conspiracy. M.I.A. reportedly supports them and their action (keyword: Reportedly), using the loads of money she makes from her music, something that has led disputers (yes, it's a word) to call it "blood music." Although the website for the organization says that they "do not war" and that they "want peace and to resolve their problems through peaceful means," they have killed hundreds through assassinations, civilian attacks, and suicide bombings, and have performed what they call "ethnic cleansing". In addition, they have smuggled arms illegally.
On the other hand, the Sri Lankan government is corrupt in its own right. And M.I.A. is a genius. She has always been political, and has tried to be virtually the only artist integrating that into hip hop music-- she said, "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." Her eclectic persona is one of a kind, but kind of weird--she's political, smart, lucrative, noisy, chaotic; her light show is pictures of kids in third world countries. The artist is the daughter of Tamil militants, but she denies supporting terrorism, and she says that her music is "the voice of a civilian refugee".
According to the organization--considered a terrorist group by 31 countries--the only way to peace in Sri Lanka is their secession; however, their means for getting their are questionable (to say the least). It's difficult to tell what is true--how violent the organization is, whether they are valiant liberators or terrorists, whether M.I.A. does support them or not--so I'm trying to write objectively in this blog post.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
All we can do is hope that M.I.A's music doesn't cause death.
Well, enjoy the rest of your day!
Video for "Paper Planes"; gunshots in the chorus and some lines led to controversy over its meaning, but she defends it, saying it's a comment on how immigrants and refugees often turn to violence because "people don't feel like the contribute to culture."
Sri Lankan rapper DeLon's response to M.I.A.'s Tamil Tiger support (DISTURBING). M.I.A. says that DeLon's video is shameless self-promotion.
Tamil Tigers
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