She’s the songbird of the hit movie Slumdog Millionaire but in her native Sri Lanka suspicions about Oscar-nominated hip-hop star M.I.A.’s political sympathies have cost her success and fans.
Born in the UK to Sri Lankan parents — both ethnic Tamils — the 32-year-old rapper, whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam, grew up in the island’s conflict-ridden north.
It’s an experience she has said informs her music and she is unapologetic about her outspoken condemnation of the atrocities that have taken place during more than three decades of civil war.
After Arulpragasam’s family fled to India and then back to London, she studied music and went on to achieve the sort of fame that saw her performing live, heavily pregnant, at this month’s Grammy awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
Her song Paper Planes, on the Slumdog Millionaire sound track, was nominated for a Grammy as record of the year.
O Saya, her collaboration with Indian composer A.R. Rahman for the film, is up for a best-song Oscar.
While the accolades flood in, however, she said in a recent interview with www.dailybeast.com that her current focus is not on awards but on the Tamil struggle for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka.
Her father is said to have been a Tamil militant linked to a group known for its bombing campaign in the capital Colombo in the mid 1980s.
The Tigers’ 37 years of armed struggle is said by the government to be nearing an end with security forces on the verge of crushing the rebels, who are now corralled in a narrow jungle strip in the island’s northeast.
Arulpragasam, in her interview with the US-based Web site, described the current situation as one of “systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
“I actually come from there and the fact is that this is happening now,” she is quoted as saying.
“I lived in Sri Lanka when the campaign for ethnic cleansing started and if I could stop it and see the end of it in my lifetime that would be amazing. I can’t justify my success otherwise.”
Such comments have not endeared her to parts of Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese community, with some people accusing her of sympathizing with the Tigers — branded a terrorist organization by the EU and the US.
The music video of her song Bird Flu shows children dancing in front of what looks like the Tamil Tiger insignia of a roaring tiger.
“M.I.A.’s lyrics and style of music don’t appeal to people here,” said local rapper Krishan Maheson, who released an unofficial re-mixed version of Paper Planes in her native Tamil.
Maheson, also a Tamil, said he received hate mail for promoting the song.
“The feedback was ‘why are you working with her? She’s a terrorist,’ Having said that, she deserves credit for her artistry and fame,” Maheson said.
Her music is not played on Sri Lankan radio or television — which, like music retailers, dropped her for fear of offending the government as the war dragged on — or in nightclubs.
Her fans must make do with Internet sites such as YouTube or MySpace.
“I think there is lot of political pressure not to play her music because of the hype surrounding her work,” said local musician Eshantha Peiris.
Local song writer and jazz musician Dilip Seneviratne, who is Sinhalese, said: “She generates a lot of hype about her roots, about the war, but her stage presence and what she sang [at the Grammys] turned me off.”
Critics such as US-based Sri Lankan rapper DeLon have accused her of glorifying terrorism and called her a “terrorist chick.”
Sri Lankan music fans have a broad spectrum of genres to choose from, with everything from pop, jazz, heavy metal and rock dominating the airwaves, and Western classical concerts playing to packed houses.
Local rap and pop performers who record in English are also popular, so there is little indication in the vigorous blogosphere debate on M.I.A. that the Sri Lankan music scene is poorer for her absence.
“M.I.A doesn’t have a clue about Sri Lanka,” says blogger Surekha Ratnatunga.
“She is the voice the world will listen to, but makes the same mistake as the government, by acknowledging the plight of only a portion of Sri Lankan population.”
M.I.A.’s songs contain their fair share of violent imagery and the chorus of Paper Planes is peppered with percussive gunshot sounds as a backdrop to the implicitly violent lyrics: “All I want to do is — Bang! Bang! Bang! — And take your money.”
But the artist insists her creativity is born of her own experience.
“If you think lyrics about guns are bad, I shouldn’t have been shot at when I was 7 years old,” she told the Wall Street Journal.
She said Paper Planes refers to the stereotypes that Third World immigrants to the West often suffer.
“It’s about people driving cabs all day and living in a [expletive] apartment and appearing really threatening to society. But not being so,” she told the Houston Chronicle newspaper.
“I’ve seen people get massacred in front of me. When you come from that kind of background, you do become matter of fact and tell it like it is,” she said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist