A few weeks ago I got it into my head to write a piece about popular music and political violence. You know, from "John Brown's Body" up through Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" and Rage Against The Machine's "Bomb Track", plus Irish songs like "Rising of the Moon," and Fela Kuti too.
To do justice to a piece like that would really take a mound of sociological and demographic data that I neither have, nor would gladly research and cook down just to put on the interweb for free. So the piece I had in mind lolled and languished, half-started and nowhere near any conclusions. Everything I grasped at dissolved into air.
The problem is, at the end of the day bullets have killed approximately a billion more people than guitars have. Including the unfortunate cases of former Yardbird Keith Relf and former Shadow John Rostill, both electrocuted while playing the guitar, I think the score is something like bullets: a billion, guitars: three-ish. That disparity has to be accounted for. It seems that words draw less blood than weapons and the very question of how to relate music to violence is a difficult one to frame. As Frank Zappa said, music is just decorated bits of time.
But then again that is letting musicians off the hook too easily. Sometimes music can matter, or Union soldiers wouldn’t have sung an anthem to a domestic terrorist (“John Brown’s Body”) when they marched into battle against the Confederacy.
The reason I started the now defunct piece in the first place was because of M.I.A. M.I.A. is a 28 year old conceptual artist from London who came by a secondhand drum machine and started creating beats and laying down tracks. Those tracks eventually became an album, Arular, that has become a chart hit in the UK and a critical sensation on this side of the Atlantic.
M.I.A.'s real name is Maya Arulpragasam. She was born in Sri Lanka and grew up dodging bullets and capture by the Sri Lankan army before escaping to London with her parents at age 11. She spent her teenage years in some truly dire London council estates (that's "the projects") and at first found she could not start school because her English was not good enough. Safe to say, she has had an "interesting" life, if by "interesting" you mean dangerous, bizarre, and difficult. The nickname “M.I.A.” is a double entendre which in London is understood to primarily mean “Missing in Acton,” Acton being (I am told) the council estate she grew up in.
Article comments
1 - Lonely Canuck
Just saying, I got a chance to interview her - you can listen to it here
2 - Michelle
I think there's an area that a lot of people are missing with M.I.A. and that is: humor. I feel like a lot of what she says is tongue-in-cheek. If you look at it that way, it takes on a whole new meaning. Maybe that's just my take, but when you take a song like Sunshowers and think about how U.R.A.Q.T. is on the same record, you have to wonder how "serious" this is all supposed to be. I feel like there may be an element of spoofing gangsta rap. Something to think about.
3 - Antonia
Interesting article. I'm glad someone had the guts to put this out there. It's what I've felt all along about the content of her music. Yea, it sounds good... "catchy"... but really, the content is vile. It's worse than vile. And you're right... fans are stupid. And that's why, despite the world scene and how WRONG her music is especially in light of it... she still succeeds. It's disgusting.
4 - Antonia
I just noticed that article was forever ago.
LoL... ah well... point is it all still applies... doesn't it.
5 - Christopher Rose
Acton isn't a council estate, it is a borough of London.
6 - Trust --/--- (this is a cross if you look sideways)
Okay so first of all, "Antonia", her music isn't so "vile" compared to other artists like Ke$ha, Rihannah, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and tons of rappers. If you listen to some of her songs she is venting her feelings and things that she has seen that have possibly scarred people and herself. And these vile things are things some of us Americans don't know about. Most of us don't know about how brutal people are and how twisted situations are outside of America. She is educating us through her music. And at least she says things in her songs to teach us while other stars talk about sex and drinking in their songs and how much they love it. And no one should hate her because she rocks. She is strong and brave for wanting to let people know about things. And your hateful comments hurt me because I am certainly not stupid. And if you think I am, your wrong because you don't even know me. But how you feel about your music is your opinion. But I think you should take a little time to compare her music values to current music. And look up some articles about her. Like she is striving to change how Tamil people are treated. And her trip to Africa to learn the African's everyday life.
Also don't be to cruel if you would like to comment about me. I'm a bit young.
7 - zingzing
"born free" rules my world.
8 - dimple
However this "education" isn't correct. The Tamil Tigers were a terrorist group. They killed innocent people, used them as human shields, etc. The Sri Lankan government isn't attacking Tamils, and no one is really holding any grudges against Tamils. She simply likes painting herself as the victim and big government as the corrupt dictator, when really the situation is neither so simple nor similar.