As much as I love MIA’s music, explaining her politics has been one continuous migraine. Especially since I live in hipsterland, and all the kool kids wanted to know if I was related to a “freedom fighter” too when she first made a splash with Arular. She’s toned down the LTTE rhetoric recently and, heaven help me, I’m still a huge fan…but there’s a new Sri Lankan kid on the scene, and he’s determined to inject another perspective into the fray and take her down a peg or two.
“All she wanna do is [bang][bang][bang] and [ka-ching!] take your money” he raps over MIA’s “Paper Planes” instrumental while images of the aftermath of LTTE suicide bombs flash across the screen. (The images are as gruesome as one would expect, so please consider this a disclaimer.)
The video was released less than a week ago, and keeps getting yanked off YouTube by Universal Music Group (MIA’s record label). Go to CeylonRecords to see it if the embedded video above has been disabled. Meet Delon Jayasingha. Biodata are thin on the ground, but it looks like he’s from L.A. (born there?) and going by his last name, clearly has a Sinhala Sri Lankan dad. He’s coined a new genre named “Salsa Hip-Hop” that sounds exactly as described – hiphop rhymes over salsa rhythms. Check out the link to see a video from his album, The Connection.
His original songs don’t grab me quite the way MIA’s do, but it’s pretty fantastic to have two Sri Lankans out there making ripples. And yeah, I still do think that MIA’s a musical phenomenon. The song is catchy, however you cut it. In terms of her SL politics, however, she’s an opportunist at worst and terribly naive at best. Can’t wait to see how this plays out!
Update: MIA responds:
“I don’t support terrorism and never have,” she wrote in a statement. “As a Sri Lankan that fled war and bombings, my music is the voice of the civilian refugee. Frankly, I am not trying to start dialogue with someone who is really just seeking self-promotion.”
Zing! Does this mean she’s the “establishment” Sri Lankan pop musician now? Reading her statement is pretty amusing since her first album was named for her father’s rebel code name, and she faced accusations of self-promotion herself. For now it appears that the music snobosphere finds her far more exciting than Delon’s derivative output. [Snark meant to encompass this post as well!] But it’s possible that people who dislike MIA’s hard beats (“it sounds like crushing cans!!”-overheard comment) might be exactly the type to gravitate to DeLon’s suburban pimpin’ ways. Hey, even Ja Rule had a heyday.
And even I can get on the MIA train and “self-promote”, dammit! The Pitchfork link references an old Robert Christgau article which in turn referenced my comments on a nerdy music site. I’m the half-n-half in the “heartrending roller coaster of a political debate.” There are so few Sri Lankans talking about the situation there that anyone gets noticed. Even dumbasses with bad handles. And that’s all due to MIA showing up and forcing her way to the forefront of an insular scene with talent, Elastica connections and an exotic backstory. As irritating as Delon the person might be (I’ve watched his other youtube videos since the original post. Smug, much?) now he’s out there talking about Sri Lanka too. And maybe somehow we’ll get to point when people understand there are no sides, just greed and corruption.
Then again, I’d also like a stable full of unicorns, but Mr. C says it ain’t happening.
Thanks to Sonali in NO for the tip!
Catchy song even with the heavy “borrowing” from The Clash. Then again N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew also had catchy beats and I don’t know if they had anything redeeming in their songs.
Both these two are cultivating an image in order to sell records. Maybe there is a message in their somewhere as well, but they are pandering to people with disposable cash who want some street cred or something to identify with. Besides isn’t she marrying some rich guy, Benjamin Brewer? Doesn’t seem in keeping with the rebel, freedom fighter chic image.
I’ve always found it interesting that there are rules and acceptable standards when it comes to killing people or fighting wars, this sense of fairness. You can’t gas an army with chemical weapons but you can bomb them with Tomahawk missile or a remote controlled Predator drone plane. Men with rifles versus an Apache helicopter doesn’t seem fair either.
Killing is generally thought of as bad, but justified in certain circumstances in most people’s opinion (i.e. your life to the life of your family is threatened). So throughout history mankind (we guys have started most of the wars) has fought many wars both just and unjust in the name of freedom. We have clothed ourselves in rhetoric, pageantry, speeches, and song to justify our cause. Whether we are “fighting to overthrown an oppressive regimen” or “trying to liberate people from an evil dictator in the name of democracy” we have to disguise and dress it up in order to seem palatable. Wars are fought by young men who die for the ambitions of old men (see Roger Waters’ Amused to Death and Dylan’s Masters of War)
Interesting debate and thanks for the post.
148 · Raj said
Way to paper over the entire history of postcolonial Sri Lanka. This kind of “dialogue” is irritatin like the hiccups. Step up, please.
145 · Raj said
Try a parallel with a chance of happening–besides, the ‘traditional’ jaffna society that is often held up as some archetype of SL tamil culture is in many ways just as socially conservative as Wahhabi society–you honestly think this hypothetical AQ dad wouldn’t put out a hit on his haram daughter if she dared bare more than her eyes in a video seen by millions of lecherous infidels?
try reading all the comments. This has already been addressed.
which is why the Iranian gov’t has pledged millions towards helping the LTTE rebuild infrastructure and why the LTTE nearly made it to the HRC at the UN!
Now i’m grateful and all to the SL Gov’t for not making my 70 year old grand-aunt and uncle disappear after taking them to the police station (at 3am) for questioning about guns seen in a wall-mounted picture from the 50s (turrist hog hunting!) and bomb fuses they were supposedly peddling to their similarly aged neighborhood, as the Tigers would have been far less kind, but is it all really necessary(especially the thousand frantic calls to find someone we knew in the command structure)? Can one direct one’s paranoia at inanimate objects that cannot emote instead of old people suffering from varying levels of dementia?
Nayagan, it would help understand your comments better if you could make a few things clear:
1)Do you support an independent political entity or homeland for the Tamils of SL?
2)Who do you think is primarily responsible for the ethnic mess in SL?
3)What do you think is the best solution at this point in time?
4)Lastly, could you succintly (maybe 1 or 2 sentences) summarize your views on the LTTE?
I ask you this because obviously you have strong feelings about this all but it’s hard to get a sense of where you stand and what you would actually like to see happen in SL. If you had unlimited powers to bend people’s actions to your will, how would you use that to solve the SL situation? Maybe I can learn something from your answers.
someone sent me this:
â€Paper Planes†I worked on it with Wesley [Pentz, bka Diplo]. I think ‘Paper Planes’ is Wes’ idea, and Dave [Taylor, bka Switch] worked on it. We worked on it in London to get the sound of it right. But the idea was Wes’, with the Clash ‘Straight to Hell’ sample. [As far as the vocals], that’s how I sing. Most the time when I go into the studio to sing, I get really bored. If I’m going to sing then I’m going to have to sing a bit weird. But with that one I just woke up and just sang the whole song in one go. It was in the morning and I wasn’t thinking too much. I hadn’t brushed my teeth.
[The sample of the gun reloading and then the cash register ringing] was a joke. I was having this stupid visa problem and I didn’t know what it was, aside from them thinking that I might to fly a plane into the Trade Center—which is the only reason that they would put me through this. I actually recorded that in Brooklyn, in Bed-Stuy. I was thinking about living there, waking up every morning—it’s such an African neighborhood. I was going to get patties at my local and just thinking that really the worst thing that anyone can say [to someone these days] is some shit like: â€What I wanna do is come and get your money.†People don’t really feel like immigrants or refugees contribute to culture in any way. That they’re just leeches that suck from whatever. So in the song I say All I wanna do is [sound of gun shooting and reloading, cash register opening] and take your money. I did it in sound effects. It’s up to you how you want to interpret. America is so obsessed with money, I’m sure they’ll get it.
http://www.thefader.com/articles/2007/08/07/video-interview-mia-jimmy
I hope you give him a PhD at the end 🙂
154 · Amitabh said
My ideal situation is actually no separate area at all, but a north/north-east integrated economically with the rest of the island. An area of greater autonomy is fine, but how do you decide which laws to obey and which to reject? If the gov’t in Colombo passes more economic liberalization measures (which i would welcome), it would be entirely possible for the political entity with greater autonomy that previously held to say no (perpetuating the insular attitude of ‘current political’ representation.)
Naming primary causes is a Huntingtonian exercise in reducing the combustion engine to fuel and air in a bucket of gears–that said, there is a general historical pattern of populist political movements creating bad short-run public policy (premised as it is, on the ambitions of wealthy politicians to pander to a less wealthy electorate conditioned by half-boiled socialist propaganda to believe that the gov’t must keep them solvent and shield them from competition) masquerading as long-run public policy.
see answer #1.
(again with the request for brevity!) The LTTE, in discourse, is a blanket term for perpetrators of all extrajudicial killings/kidnappings/unadvertised abductions/bombings done anywhere in SL. They are a terrorist organization composed of old-school ideologues (minority) and children (majority) who grew up during the conflict without experiencing anything but the conflict–there certainly are some poseurs, or those who had a chance at a full and fulfilling life (abroad), but due to the youthful majority it’s safe to say that most are conflict kids with little recourse (to find peaceful productive alternatives) or known incentive to choose an alternate path (and that’s not factoring in the conscription of anyone able to lift an ak-47 off the ground.)
157 · Nayagan said
i was a bit too quick to dismiss, so let’s say that my ideal situation is a Lanka in which the most heavily armed gov’t employees are park rangers, the cultural descendants of Mahadevan Sathasivam can compete for spots in the national side and the military both takes up less than 10% of overall spending and is composed proportional to the current population.
Nayagan said
Please explain “the cultural descendants”? Did you mean minority(non-Sinhalase),Tamil or Colombo -Tamil elite? Take the cricket team for an example. Sri Lanka had Vonodhan John(colombo- Tamil) opening the bowling in 80’s. Then came Murali(up country Tamil),Russel Arnold(Colombo -Tamil),T(Tuan).M .Dilshan(Father is a Malay),Jehan Mubabarak(Muslim),Unofunate Naveed Navaz(Muslim) who did not get to open for Sri Lanka because it was so comepetive(captain of Sri Lanka A),Micheal Vandort(Burger).I might have several others.
If you meant the colombo-elite , the real cultural descendant of Satha you should look at the colombo elite’s dwindling representaion in the Sri Lankan team(specially from schools like Royal or St.Thomas’)Cricket used be an game for the elites in the country before 70’s.The TV ,Radio and the administrators changed that .They have an world championship and a final apprearance to prove that .Satha’s cultural descendant’s are completing but they cannot match the row talent coming out of provinces.
155 · SONALI IN NEW ORLEANS LAND OF DREAMS said
I think this is the “other” scandal with M.I.A., and the one that i’m more personally invested in – that Diplo is the music behind the celebrity. I want to see her make a good album without him.
i was referring to non-singhalese kids, of which the vast majority are Tamil (not elite or non-elite–my family was poor but considered ‘good stock’ whatever the hell that means). Russel and Murali are the only tamil cricketers to hold a somewhat-steady spot in the national side, and I’ve never heard of a region of the country where burgher populations (as it is diffuse) are systematically terrorized on all sides.
how was Satha an elite? Because he could speak english?
160 · Dr AmNonymous said
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arular#Background
there are quite a songs on there that stand up in which she didn’t choose him as a collaborator. she likes the collabos….
Refer the link from wikipidedia I article you mentioned.(below in the links). I would rather not go into details ,mocking this statement……
If you know Sri Lankan history I do not think would make the above statement.
Even now ,if you can speak English you belong to a elite group of people(Except may be couple of hundred beach boys in south and some personal servents for rich) .People who can speak English are less than 5%. If you played Cricket before 1970s for one of the clubs or schools you were a extremely elite sub group of that elite.Then if you played for Royal or St.Thomas’ then you are a part of tiny minority of people who are extremely influencial and wealthy(In Sri Lankan scale of things ,of course) That class is not represented in the current Sri Lanka team except Jehan Mubarak and Kumar Sangakkara.Although a lot of people point to the parents for reason Jehan being in the team ,Kumar is a freak of nature.He is one of a kind ,he excelled in all sports in his age group while doing great academically at the same time!Just check out some videos in you tube or read his columns or blog posts in CrickInfo. Kumar belongs to the same social class that Satha represented but he is not from Colombo.From what I know from anecdotal evidence,Satha might have been the same kind but would have faced stiff competition if he is trying out for the current team from the guys who could have been his servents in his era.
Nayagan, May be you were trying to bait somebody to say this. Current Sri Lankan Cricket team is the closet thing to a meritocracy as you can get in Sri Lanka! There will always be some rumors but if you cannot prove yourself usually get kicked off.On the other hand they aggresively seem out new talent from every ethinic or social background. They just care about winning and the money the game generates.
That seems absurdly low for a country where government is apparently conducted in English. It’s no wonder the populace is so prone to manipulation by elites (on both sides).
You have to take things in context. If you can speak English and you have the means(legaly or illegaly) to leave the country .Then you might be belong to an elite with 2 exceptions. 1.Tamil Refugees who are in India. 2.Domestic Servants of of all ethnic backgrounds in Middle East (Notice I did not even include Sinhalese in Italy.They could get there becuase they either had money or connections). Of course I’m looking at this from a average Sri Lankan’s point of view.Do not try hold this against first world standards.
164 · chandare said
sure, if you discount the internally displaced population (hip term for refugees) and the entire north and east. My favorite players of all time are Sanath and Murali, who occupied different economic strata (Murali’s father had a biscuit factory!), but do you think Murali (for all his incredible talent) would have had a chance if he grew up in Jaffna?
Now that we are talking some real politics and not the music variety, I can chime in my declining 2 cents too..
I think majority of the tamils would agree with Nagayan and feel the same way. The core of the conflict is in the SL government’s inability to acknowledge the issue and to come up with a solution. What puzzles me to no end is every government that comes to power acts if though they just heard of the problem and go on about how they need to have conferences and things to solve the problem. It is pathetic that a problem that is raging over 50 years has not been seen as a number one impediment for progress in this country that was once a shining model for open economy for the whole region. While the a few previous governments had some progressive plans on the economy, every single government since independence spent their time pandering to the ethnic majority at the very expense of the minority. Under the guise of democrazy, all the legislative and executive powers were vested with the singular, ethnic, majority while taking away even minor minority protections. All democratic and peaceful protestations of the minority were met with violent response in the name of protecting the sovereignty. This is how, regretfully, ltte came to the forefront and continues to enjoy support from locals who believe there will never get a fair deal from any of the governments. The government(s) is also successful in linking everything and everyone asking for any sort of devolution with ltte while continue mask the fact they have nothing credible to offer even after 50 years. If you are not with us, you are with the terrorist tag line had some traction here for a limited time, while this has been the operating principle of most of srilankan governments
Every SL government functions the same way
1) Contain the conflict to the north and the east so that no direct impact of the war is felt in the south. Block media access to conflict areas, control, manipulate and manufacture news and information.
2) Discredit all the indirect impacts (unemployment, inflation, non existence of basic human rights, etc, etc) as a temporary conditions to fight the evils terrorism ( sounds familiar??? ) 3) Continue to disallow all the political space for tamils who advocate any sort of devolution
Even the guy considered the arch enemy of ltte, Indian national security adviser, Narayanan, had this to say yesterday.
http://news.smashits.com/282427/Sri-Lanka-doesn-39t-have-Tamils-on-its-side-India.htm
Americans think about the best of the options and strive to achieve it own their own (despite few hiccups) while Srilankans are reminded of the worst that can happen to them so that they don’t think about better ways to do things.
May be not … He might be dead by now for conspiring with with the enemy PLaying cricket with Army is a deed punshable by death penalty.
162 · Nayagan said
thanks! this resolves the lesser of the two conspiracy theories 🙂
Thanks for you answers Nayagan. For the record I do believe that blame can primarily be assigned to Sinhalese leaders/people at the outset; but that the LTTE is an absolutely horrific entity. I think the best solution is/would have been… more respect for the social, cultural, political, and economic rights of the SL Tamils. At the expense of the unrealistic Sinhalese view/notion/conceptual framework of all of SL as belonging exclusively to them.
I hate to play this game Amitabh, but if you want to talk about the ‘original sin’, it almost certainly lies with the British, not the Sinhalese, and certainly not the Sinhalese people. They were just pawns manipulated as part of a larger game, like most of us.
If my father was the Grand Dragon of the KKK, and I released an album with lyrics referring to all the atrocities the KKK committed in the first person… if my videos, imagery, and attire contained symbols of white, pointy hats and burning crosses… if I wore KKK attire in numerous public events…. if my lyrics spoke of bombings, murders, violence and hate…. and after all that, if I said, “I’m not supporting racism. My videos are the voice of a suppressed brown person who grew up in midwestern America…” what do you think the reaction would be? If after 9-11, an artist emerged wearing Osama Bin Laden attire and promoting his cause, what would the reaction be? In my opinion, MIA is the worst kind of coward, bc she won’t straight up admit what she has been underhandedly doing for her entire career….covertly selling the cause of the LTTE in a very subliminal way. Promoting violence, murder, child soldiers…essentially glorifying ever horrid act the LTTE does. The only reason she is still signed with UMG even after being exposed is because she is talking about a tiny island that doesn’t really matter much to the USA – Sri Lanka. It’s really sad how selfish we are, at the end of the day.
I guess that’s a positive, now we’re only comparing them to the KKK.
BabyGirlSinhala, it’s about perspective. To many Tamils, the LTTE isn’t evil incarnate. Like someone else alluded to above, the majority of them are just tamil kids who were forced to join by conscription or circumstance. It’s hard to feel uncompromising hatred for them, and it’s hard to celebrate when you hear about hundreds getting killed day in and day out. It’s the leadership that’s created this, you might compare them to other heinous groups, but the foot soldier? Not evil.
It’s a confused, complicated affinity that MIA bears out in her music. Try to think about this from the perspective of the minority, rather than the majority.
172 · apples said
I hate to play it too, but the Soulbury Constitution didn’t do SL any favors. The ‘pawns’ model is somewhat troubling because i have a hard time seeing an SL where parties spouting JHU-like nationalism (Muscular Bikkhu Nationalism?) and anti-West paranoia (they are so afraid of Sinhala culture, they’re funding the opposition AND the tigers) do not find enough support to throw their weight around in Parliament (or is this just a feature of parliamentary democracy?)
BabyGirlSinhala:
In order for the KKK = LTTE to happen, the LTTE would have to have run the country, be the police, be your butcher, while owning you and your family somewhere in the past 150-200 years. Instead they are a minority population fighting for power. Also, most members of the clan were over the age of 18, which is not the case for the LTTE.
Also the KKK are an extension of the most horrific mass slavery in modern history leaving and entire group of people devoid of any sense of identity. Please do not insult the descendents of American black slaves with this comparison.
This is a totally seperate issue. Do not equate the two.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/20/a-genocide-inquiry/
todays news on genocide!!!!!!!!!!! LTTE is not right but you think the SLA GENOCIDE is? id rather have 2, 000 ltte members in the jungle try to kill me then 2 million sri lankan army in a 95% millitarized country.
you cant disagree with fairness so please dont state the LTTE without stating the SLA genocide in the same breath!
do you think m.i.a couldn’t take a jz beat and edit all over it pictures of dead tamil civilians in mass graves? most of the dead people in his video are tamil !!!!!! know that first. before you gasp of the horror
The little girl crying on the first picture is a daughter of a UNP MP Maheswaren who was Killed by Sri Lankan government last year. It was the state terrorism picture and deceptive Delon uses for his propaganda. Very misleading…..
if a tamil made a video like that guess what? you will be shot in sri lanka and shot down everywhere else in the world for being a LTTE suppoter! we know that because M.I.A gets that for wearing a tiger print t shirt in her video.
not all keffiyeh wearing people are terrorists not all tiger print wearing, tiger animal loving people are terroist this was M.I.A point 5 years ago in aint nothin new!
this is a cheap shot and a shot for sri lankan genocide supporters to quash any insight into tamils freedom of speech.
we are like going backwards so hard in time with this much one sidedness in the media. this issue with M.I.A at least weeds out hateful racists, so we know where we all stand and stop pretending we care about safety , what happens when your protectors , the army and the police are the ones doing the killing who do you go to when the world calls every tamil standing up against it a terrorist , who do you really really go to for help?
To my opinion : no one should wear, Idolized, promote, represent or advertise in any kind of shape or form, anything you don’t support. For example : if a person doesn’t support “obama” (which btw I voted for him) you wont see them wearing a shirt that says his name on it plain and simple…so with that said Im not say she is a terrorist but also we have to consider there a good possibility that the bitch could be a terrorist project.
It is estimated over 70,000 people have been officially listed as killed in the war since 1983. However, a recent study published in the esteemed British Medical Journal indicates that these figures are far from accurate. The independent study, performed by the University of Washington and Harvard Medical School, indicates that at least 215,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka’s war up until 2002 . The study further states the estimate may be as high as 338,000 killed, taking into account various factors that may have led to under-reporting, and only includes those killed directly due to violence in the conflict. The study is careful to point out that their survey’s inability to “capture families with no survivors” is another source of downward bias, and that their estimates are thus conservative. Sri Lanka is a failed, parayah state where minority Tamils are killed by majority sinhala every single day.
I know Delon’s family history. I do not want to insult him on the public domain. He is not an honest person.
MIA’a father is an ex member of EROS – which is also a terrorist outfit associated with the LTTE – which had been responsible for numerous savage attacks on villages and hamlets in the Northern Sri Lanka together with the LTTE and murder of hundreds of innocent villagers. Naturally, as uneducated as she is, MIA will support her father’s ideologies and the savage Tamil Tigers’ barbaric activities. Unfortunately for her, because of her sympathy for the Tiger terrorist sadists, she is now identified better around world as a supporter of terrorism rather than a talented rap performer.
The Tamil so-called “theologicians”, claim that Sri Lanka was originally inhabited by Tamils and that the Sinhalese people came to Sri Lanka only much later with Prince Vijaya. These jokers disregard and deny the very scripts that have documented history of India and Sri Lanka which mention otherwise. If these so-called Tamil theolocians’ claims are true, then what happened during those several thousands of years to make the Sinhala people the current majority ethnic group with over 70% of the population and the Tamils less than 20% (which includes those who were imported by the British from India)? This would imply that the only thing the Sinhalese men have done over the years is have sex all the time to achieve this successful majority status while Tamil men maybe suffering from “erectile dysfunction” or are “gay”!
MIA is a fookin prawn.
She did an American interview downplaying the capabilities of the Tigers stating that “there are less then 4,000, you can sneeze and they’d disappear.” They why did a civil war last as long as it did? She also stated the “Tigers never had sofisticated weapons” hummm. Was it thenthe Tamil people who committed war crimes? She has a way of asking many different governments to fix her problem and that of other of other nations and staing the US has the control. The UN decides that. She speaks hate. She is hatefilled.