M.I.A. and Rekha spun sets in sweltering Central Park today. BrooklynVegan, center of all things Maya, hasn’t posted a review, but here are photos from Death of a Party (the full set of photos flickers here and here). She hankers for the ’80s with a swirl of Japanese schoolgirl. One commenter says:
They told DJ Rekha during her set that it was the biggest crowd that Summerstage saw all season.
Inablogadavida wonders:
Seriously, there were 12 million people in line, and I was 12,000,001. So, no, I didn’t even come close to getting in. In fact, from where I was sitting, M.I.A. sounded like Rosie Perez reciting the morning call to prayer through a cardboard tube. Why can I never manage to jump on a pop-culture bandwagon before it shows up on T.R.L.?
Cicatrix reviews the set in the comments:
Rekha mixed it up with Bhangra, dancehall, some hip-hop, and really cheekily, a few baile funk songs at the end…… Diplo next… his set was surprisingly boring. He didn’t play any baile funk until the very end… I guess the crowd wasn’t feeling “Walks Like an Egyptian” mashing into anything…
Ok, MIA. They unfurled a full length banner behind her… and brought out some sort of papier mache helicopter… and you guessed it – a 3’x6′ cardboard TIGER… I grit my teeth as the two girl pranced out to the edge of the stage and gave military salutes…
MIA wore blue lace calf-length leggings with a large belted crazy color top, piles of bracelets and hoop earings the diameter of hubcabs. With a high sideways ponytail…
The crowd ate up everything. I was scowling at first, then got teary, then started chanting along and bouncing, then felt a headache coming on… I was really surprised at how many people knew all the words. really! It was a special moment for disenfranchised women when she held the mic to an audience of hipsters who chanted back “I can get squeaky so you can come and oil me” during ‘Hombre.” My jaw is bruised from dropping.
She saved “Galang” for last. Crowd went crazy. She emerges for an encore, with a full costume change (dancers too) in less than 5 minutes… Same leggings with cute tweedy looking shift dress with purple sleeves. Really low in the back, and her bra strap was (green) was brazenly visible. I have no idea how she pulls this off, but I really want to know. Backup singers in metallic bodysuits. Finishes with “URQT” and “BINGO.”She switched “Bucky Done Gun” lyrics to “Brooklyn quieten down / Central Park quieten down.” Also got Manhattan and Queens… I’d heard that she was a lackluster performer, but she certainly proved that wrong. Great energy, great rapport with the dancers, very very cute.
She’s excellent live — she feeds off her rabid fans. But she’s lackluster on TV, she doesn’t project diva-esque confidence.
Update: A LiveJournal user discovers bhangra:
Natalie Portman was chilling in the VIP area… I do have to say she looks very beautiful in person and she chopped off her hair. I wasn’t too fond of M.I.A, I found her quite annoying as a matter of fact. I did enjoy Mr. Vegas and DJ Rekha. I found out today that I really like Bhangra music or whatever it’s called.
If you thought our blog had M.I.A. on Elliott Spitzer’s double super secret payola spin, you should see this one:
I didn’t like the sound of her–junior league rhymes, a cruddy hodgepodge of garage and grime and dancehall and hip hop and dance pop. Overhyped by MTV. The it-girl that everyone wants to see (what happened to the Arcade Fire?). But I went…We got to Summerstage early under partly sunny skies and surrounded by a certain kind of hip kid–the not-so-pretty ones with good clothes and ironic or obscuring haircuts, and lots of Office Space-style “flair.” You know, there but for the grace of a hot body they would be a stripper/ porn star.On line, right before the floor opened, the fella in front of us realized his friends were never going to reach us. So he opened his bottle of wine to us and became our new buddy. Which started a long afternoon of beer swilling, olive eating, blueberry photographing, thai-stick smoking. Best of all, it was the Summerstage show that was like it was ten years ago.We made friends with a kid from Cali who showed us what medical marijuana looked and smelled like; we met couples; saw friends from the high school; saw some crazy blonde dancing and some ill Latina dancing. And made friends with the guy who gave us the wine. And M.I.A. was incredible. Energetic, fun, and when I realized that I don’t have to take her seriously, I don’t have to compare her to political artists. I can… just enjoy the music. [Link]… she needs to work a lil on her stage presence but all in all she sounded really good. DJ Rekha was off the hook she bumped some Basement Bhangra I had never heard mixes like that before… [Link]
Good God, the eighties really are back in a big way. I swear, I’ve got a picture of me from high-school (maybe college?) in an outfit almost exactly like that. Come to think of it, I used to wear leggings with oversized shirts. And pile on the bracelets. She could be in an episode of Facts of Life. Hysterical. Everything old is new again….
Military salutes and TIGER banners? Yucky. Good thing I’m an old prude who doesn’t understand this new-fangled music and therefore, would have no reason to be at an MIA concert.. Good review, Cicatrix. I enjoyed reading it.
Dang. If I’d known that would soon be part of a post, I’d have watched my typos!
Sorry for that, everyone. And I dunno what happened to the /i> in the review of Diplo’s set. I just wanted ‘done’ to be emphasized.
Might I add that she also said something like, “I don’t mind if you download my songs (laughs)..I just need to figure out some way to support myself too, you know…(laughing, turning to backup dancers and DJ)…that soundbite’s going to be everywhere now.”
I’m paraphrasing, but that was about the gist of it. Doing my best to fulfill that prediction 😉
Thanks MD. I’m itching to polish it up a bit (a lot) now 🙂
i’m diggin’ the Japanese schoolgirl-look, the paramilitary/camo made it hard to take her seriously (or rather, her support of the LTTE seriously).
hey, where/when else on SM do you guys talk about MIA (and other peeples) bending their politics to a beat? she’s on the radar around here and i’d like to direct people to the discussion(s) before they do their reviews.
Here, but also use the search box at top right on the home page.
haha… too many places…
she’s pretty sick live though, really gets the crowd going, coming back to toronto on sept ~30th, hopefully the browns can represent better than we did last time
they played her video on muchmusic (like canadian mtv) the other day and I heard her on the radio last week, so i guess she’s really comin up now
Also here and here. I’m the same cicatrix, so sorry if this is horn tooting. But many other Sri Lankans posted at length about MIA and Sri Lanka on those threads, and everyone else is a music junkie so they brought the socio-political musicology aspect.
i’m totally biting that hairstyle for her dc concert. even if it gives me a massive headache. w00t MIA! 😉
/fangirl number onthu
The LTTE is a terrorist organization. How can anyone deny that? My husband is Sri Lankan and I lived in Sri Lanka for the past year. i just returned here a couple of months ago. He was almost killed more than once growing up by bombs exploding in SCHOOL! I am not saying the LTTE has no reason for its political stance but terrorism is definitely the tactic they like to employ…albeit, it may be the only option to them.
lots of people deny it, Testy. LTTE has great propaganda machine. Lots of tamils living abroad have no clue, and willingly support the group, while tamils living in SL can’t them.
We’ve had lots of arguments about them. If you type LTTE into the search window, they should pop up.
Anna, sidepony tail worn low and soft doesn’t pull/cause tension headaches at all. Easier to pull off, too 🙂
I am starting to have MIA fantasies – especially since she started wearing her hair in bunches and pony tails – is this healthy?
Please don’t say things like this. It’s highly upsetting.
Although I would enjoy a reality show with Webster and Gary Coleman and Mr. Belvedere.
I’m glad to hear she was good cica cos she was disappointing at Glastonbury, where she was really hyped up. She hadn’t learnt how to breathe properly and get catching her breath. I’m not sure if that adversely affected her UK potential, but good to know she’s rippin it up stateside. Also not entirely sure what to make of the tiger-theme.
Mr Vegas was there! I’ve actually performed one of his songs on stage, Heads High (as a comedy – I can’t sing to save my life). He’s the man! What did you make of him?
Yes, I was there last evening…but couldn’t get in. The line was too darn long. But what surprised me most was I thought I would see more Desis – but there were hardly any in line !
I was there with a buddy from the UK, who was surprsied to see the line. He said that if this was the UK, there would be nobody in line…
Sorry cicatrix, just read your full review where you mentioned what you made of Vegas.
Punjabi Boy, I don’t think you’re alone. I got an email just now from a friend who performed with her at Glasto and he’s detailed all the filthy plans he has for her. Having travelled all over Sri Lanka, I can safely say I prefer Sinhala girls, phew!
okay this is getting retarded.
first off, where is the hoopla about the TERRORIST atrocities committed by the Government of Sri Lanka? just off the top of my head, the Chenmani Mass Graves, where 500 TAMIL civilian bodies were found, the Madhu Church bombing, where close to 200 TAMIL Dead due to Sri Lankan Air Force carpet bombing. Mankulam Massacre where the Sri Lankan Army pretty much razed the town and all Tamil Civlians. The Krishanthi Rape-Murder Case, where the Singhalese Army gang raped her, shoved a grenade up her vagina, then gang raped her mother after she went to complain about her daughter’s death.
cicatrix, try to being f’ing objective when you write. how is one to you seriously when you’re gonna be so blatantly one-sided. it doesn’t f’ing matter if you’re half-Tamil. Lakshman Kadirgamar and Douglas Devananda are full Tamils, and the shit they do to suppress Tamil Rights is beyond belief. so, please don’t front like that is some sort of credit to your retarded posts.
haha, its hilarious you think the LTTE has a strong propagandha movement, when the Government of Sri Lanka are the masters of that. have you conveniently forgotten the Media Blackout the Government issued on all news reports coming from the war regions/zones for majority of the war? pleeeze, this sickens me
oh wait, how about the Marie Colvin incident. for those of you who don’t know her, she’s a respected BBC War Zone reporter, who’s been commended many times for reporting truths, something foregin to cicatrix, about actual wars. anyway, while trying to get to the Tamil Tiger territory, our buddies in the Gov’t gave orders for the SLA (Sri Lankan Army) to shoot and kill her, they tried, but her LTTE escort protected her but she ended up losing vision in one eye during the skirmish. and then you wonder why chandrika lost her vision in one eye by a Black Tiger. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND.
so pls don’t give me shit about the LTTE propagandha machine. LOL, when the GoSL are the masters of the game.
give me a break while i go burn a Sri Lanka Flag.
DJ Rekha played a great set but almost ruined it by repeatedly pleading the crowd for love. Vegas was fun. Diplo was a crashing bore. MIA was INCREDIBLE!!! She had the crowd eating out of her hands. I screamed myself hoarse, esp during Hombre, Bucky Done Gun and Galang… Thansk for the review Cicatrix – I didn’t even notice the tiger (yuck)
she had a “3Â’x6Â’ cardboard TIGER” ?!?!
niiiiiicceee. safe to see her rep. dats my akka.
So who’s BEHIND me in the VIP (yaa, I’m cool) line at the show: Salman Facking Rushdie with the goddess of prosperity and his son. It’s not enuff he got her, but homeslice totally cuts in front of me. Bitch , no wonder there’s a fatwa against you..
I’m not an old prude and I don’t understand her music either, I’m just not digging it. Whatever floats the boat, she doesn’t float mine though.
eh, I went to high school in the 90s. I’m GLAD the 80s are back. I can wear hot pink with impunity!
Wish MIA would come to Texas, although her show might have 25 people at it. I love and NEED to see good live music (that isn’t country, grungy rock, or requires driving to Austin).
and from what I saw up there in the entry, Cicatrix is talking about pink and purple tops, blue leggings and green bra straps. How did the LTTE come into that discussion again? There’s 100 entries on that. Let’s talk about matching your bra to your outfit and whether baile funk is just the next reggaeton in this one. please?
Imagine if MIA blew herself up on stage – that would be interesting.
This goes into a longer discussion about whether there is justice in the world or we must wait for the afterworld where wearers of hot pink will surely be punished.
I saw a stellar cover band in Lubbock of GnR and Rage Against the Machine 😛
Requires clarification: ‘blew herself (pause) up on stage’ or ‘blew herself up (pause) on stage’?
An explosive performance either way.
A dead Prez take:
I got to say I was not impressed with DJ Rekha at all. In fact I thought she sucked. She has some good songs i’ll admit but her mixing skills sounds like a train wreck everytime. I thought she was a OG to this whole indian dj thing… ever heard of beat maching ? I know this kid whose 14 who does birthday parties that can house her.
Second : Mr.Vegas – eh, it was arlight. Although I loved his DJ… Got the crowd actually hyped like a good DJ should. Diplo – ehhhh. I think he had to put on a long set cause everyone else did a shorter set than they where supposed to.
MIA – Good performer. Horrible DJ. The DJ she had sucked, there was no chemistry between those two, and there where mad dead spots between songs, and songs being restarted cause of mis communication. I am all for remixes, but not if they sound worse than the original. In fact all the songs I liked at the show used the original beat. why break a good thing ? Especially when the new beats sucked. She played some of the piracy stuff which was cool. But she needs a new dj bad.
Highlight : the “Hiya yeeeee oooooo” chorus with the crowd singing along. Original beat, excellet vocals. Brought me back to the days of nyc hardcore sing alongs. very cool.
No seriously, imagine if it happened, it would be quite a story wouldnt it.
Hey maybe the Sepia crew could do it as an April Fools post next year, you have to admit it would be quite funny.
If we are talking of blowing ‘herself (pause) up on stage’, then the story could contain the footnote.
“Black Sabbath lead Ozzy Osbourne called. He wants his stage gimmick back.”
IIRC, MIA played in Austin during SXSW. Although I think you probably meant “Dallas” instead of “Texas”.
Let’s talk about matching your bra to your outfit and whether baile funk is just the next reggaeton in this one. please?
I think Baile funk is basically just a “Brazilian” name for ghetto tech with a little Brooklyn electroclash thrown in. It Brazilianizes a sound that everybody already recognizes…
It’s still phat, though…
Apparently, the word ‘baile’ means dance in Portuguese. For a good contextualized intro to Baile funk, check out the ‘big dance party scene’ from ‘Cidade de Deus’ — definitely the last word on the portrayal of Brazilian ghetto culture.
I don’t mean to be a smartass about this, but baile funk is really something fairly unique. We discussed it on another MIA thread (around comment #21. I don’t know how to make the link jump to it).
Cidade de Deus is set in the past so the favela funk (same as baile funk, funk carioca, all used interchangeably although the meanings are a bit different) is of the original, late 70s form. Where the movie ends, with the kids mindlessly killing each other? That’s the starting point for what favelas are like now. The documentary on favelas on the DVD is must see for anyone who might have missed the obvious point of the film and harbors some romanticized views of such places.
Baile funk is a bit like early, angry, hip hop, rapped in Portugeuse, set to pounding miami bass- like beats, over the most illegal, indiscriminate, attention-deficiet samples imaginable. It has a thin, screechy, thudding sound because it’s recorded (most of the time) on the 1.0 version of production gear used today.
It’s remarkable for its sheer ingenuity, since it’s like some kids in the favelas duct-taped some primitive drum machines, cut samples off their favorite Michael Jackson songs, and let loose about everything that makes them angry and horny over it.
Copy the ‘Direct link’ link at the right edge of the comment header. In IE, you right-click on ‘Direct Link’ and choose Copy Shortcut.
Hmmm, the photo has changed since I last posted. Now, she looks just like Punky Brewster.
*Andrea – to really ‘do’ the eighties look correctly, you can’t just wear hot pink. You need the big hair (preferably permed – and I had some bad perms, let me tell you, and big horrible spiky, sticky-up bangs thanks to tons of hair spray), shoulder pads, and jelly shoes. I actually owned a pair of two-tone jeans. The front and back were made of different jean material. They were the ugliest things known to man (besides my brother’s parachute pants).
The eighties may have been fun as far as youth fashion goes, but the grown-ups got to wear high-waisted tapered trousers with frontal pleats. With flats. No woman can look good in such clothes. Plus, in the nineties, Lancome used to make this lip color called Mica which was absolutely beautiful. It is now discontinued. 🙁
**I’m with you in the hot-pink, though.
***Isn’t it nice that I can hijack a thread about MIA and turn it into a shallow remembering of my youth?
VM, I saw tons of desis…of every shade and stripe of hipster imaginable 😉
One that I’m still puzzling over? A desi-looking dude with short, clipped more-salt-than-pepper hair, wearing a Tshit with pole-dancing woman that said “Gaza Strip Club XXX.”
I gasped, laughed, then felt very dirty. Of course he might have been middle-eastern, or South american or something. So hard to tell these days…
MD- I’ll see your jelly shoes and raise you an armful of jelly bracelets, some Acid-washed jeans, 2 cans of Aqua Net hairspray, a Care Bear, and the big black plastic-frame sunglasses- ala “Risky Business”
Right, I’ve finally put two and two together and realised what you’re on about cicatrix. I have a decent collection of DJ Marlboro mixes – including one simply amazing set which combines Tetris, Super Marioland, ATB, Planet Rock and some grimey Brazilian rap. I hear he’s the main man in funk in Brazil, would you agree? Apparently he came from the favelas, kind of as you describe.
What he says:
Thanks Manish.
Andrew Jackson – yeah, MIA’s DJ sucked sucked sucked. She and Diplo had much better rapport I think…should kiss and make up for both their careers.
So does anyone know anything about the tabla player she had on stage? Was he even playing? I couldn’t see him most of the time, and couldn’t tell if there was a live tabla playing over the DJ, MIA and screaming creaming audience.
Here’s a photo of the tabla player.
Bong Breaker, that’s exactly it. Great Marlboro quotes, by the way.
He is considered the godfather of the present scene, and has no peer, really. Furacão 2000 is gaining in influence, I think, but still nowhere close to having the sort of ambassadorial impact of Marlboro. I just heard his remix of “Bucky Done Gun” (soooo meta!! Diplo rips baile funk for the orginal, and now the grand-daddy of the form remixes it!)…and it’s better than the original..No shit. It’s so good.
Where did you hear the MIA mix? All the Marlboro stuff I’ve heard has been via a friend (a Sinhala DJ oddly enough). To be honest, I have never remembered to look him up in a record store.
Man she’s got a hellish tour scheduled
Sept. 19 — Athens, GA 40 Watt Club Sept. 21 — Washington, DC 930 Club Sept. 23 — Boston, MA Paradise Sept. 24 — Montreal, QUE, Spectrum Sept. 26 — Toronto, ONT, Phoenix Concert Theatre Sept. 27 — Detroit, MI St. Andrews Sept. 28 — Chicago, IL, Metro (Damn, haven’t been to Metro in years, it’ll be interesting) Sept. 29 — Minneapolis, MN Oct. 1 — Denver, CO, Gothic Theater Oct. 4 — Los Angeles, CA, Henry Fonda Oct. 5 — San Francisco, CA Grand Ballroom
Yeah, that look is definitely hot for her
http://mia.12.forumer.com 😀 http://www.miafans.tk
Parthi needs a reality check. it is definitely obvious that the GoSL have enough atrocities that make them ‘state terrorists’ but what is really terrible is when the LTTE claiming to be fighting for the Tamils kill, exploit and maim their own kind. That is truly unforgivable. I just hope M.I.A is not ‘a new age terrorist’, those who use their talent to lure people into believing that violence is the only means of achieving rights.