M.I.A. is now officially overexposed, but this Pitchfork interview is fascinating (via Chapati Mystery). A musician with something real to say: she’s making some PR flack very happy right now. She’s the anti-Anna Kournikova, with a story that’s more substantial than her stage presence.

She highlights the perils of highlights:

I have brown bits in my hair, and my Mom was practically on her knees screaming, “Nooo! You have to dye your hair before you leave the house or I’ll kill myself!” I’d be like, “What are you freaking out about?” and she’d explain the Tamil Tiger girls have been in the jungle for so long that their hair goes brown, and if you walk out like this, you’re going to get shot because people will think you’re a Tamil Tiger girl…”

Why bikes are banned in LTTE-controlled areas of Sri Lanka:

Bicycles are banned, gasoline’s banned, there’s no motor transportation… because they think you can use the inner bicycle tubes to make landmines. They banned rubber bands, so the Tigers apparently used inner tubes to make rubber bands. So they banned the whole bicycle! And that, to a Sri Lankan, is the main mode of transport…

Her dad is a Dylan fan, and terrorist is too crude a label:

When I watch President Bush on the telly going, we need to fight the axis of evil and kill these terrorists by all means necessary, I just go, “Shit, poor Dad.” In the 70s all he wanted to do was be a revolutionary like Bob Dylan. He had idealistic views about changing the world for the better and fighting for people who don’t have a voice– the same thing that Bob Dylan wanted to do. Now, he’s like this straight-up, evil terrorist; a gunned masked man with a semi-automatic ready to take down and behead people. It’s not like that; it’s really not. It’s so much more complex. They’ve made a cartoon character out of a terrorist…

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M.I.A. performs “Bucky Done Gun” on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (exclamation theirs). Download the performance and let’s see who can spot the most audience members faking enthusiasm (without hitting pause):

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”: M.I.A. (Quicktime, 12 MB, 5 mins.)
Requires a BitTorrent downloader — PC, Mac

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Alert Mutineers, set your Tivo’s – M.I.A. will be performing on tonight’s Jimmy Kimmel show @ Midnight PT.

Didn’t know that Kimmel had his own show? Neither did I. But I can’t be the only one who finds Kimmel’s pasty, overweight, dude-next-door schtick an odd place for the national broadcast debut of MIA’s edgy, ethnic, conflict-inspired tunes. Pray she doesn’t inspire Jimmy to dance.

[previous SM coverage – too, numerous, to mention]

UPDATE – Apul’s got the torrent / video clip. Continue reading →

A well-connected young tabla player named Suphala Patankar plies the waters of New York society:

The setting was the Greenwich Village town house of Diane Von Furstenberg, where, at the behest of the author Salman Rushdie, a fan, Suphala had been invited to play the tabla with her band at a party honoring the writers’ organization PEN. The crowd of around 200 quieted briefly as Padma Lakshmi, Mr. Rushdie’s wife, introduced Suphala as a new talent worthy of their ears…

The writer Suketu Mehta, long a friend of Suphala’s, said that for a young Indian woman with musical aspirations the tabla was an odd choice. “It’s the equivalent of finding a female drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band,” he said. “It’s not unheard of, but it’s unusual…”

She’s got a Forrest Gump-like ability to connect with the famous:

Last year at a party at Bungalow 8, Suphala met Mr. Rushdie, Ms. Lakshmi, Mr. [Sean] Lennon and Harper Simon, the son of Paul Simon. Within days she was jamming in the studio with Mr. Lennon, the younger Mr. Simon and Edie Brickell, the singer, who is married to Paul Simon. Mr. Rushdie offered to help promote her music…

After hearing Norah Jones, the daughter of Ravi Shankar, sing at the Knitting Factory in 2002, Suphala introduced herself and asked the singer if she wouldn’t mind stopping by her apartment to record some vocal tracks. Ms. Jones obliged, not long before her first album orbited her into international stardom…

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Shaheen Sheik is dropping her album Rock Candy on Sunday, May 1st. Now if I was a proper music reviewer I’d paint a picture for you about what her music sounds like. I’d say something clever like “Norah Jones meets so and so” and I’d use music industry words like “mellifluous.” I am not a Rolling Stones writer though. I’m just a humble blogger. I can only tell you that when she sings my feet tap and my head bobs and I think pleasant thoughts while oblivious to distractions. Besides, I’ve always thought of music the way I think of paintings. I don’t like people putting thoughts in my head of what I should expect to hear when I can simply listen for myself. Go listen to some songs off of her new CD here and decide for yourself.

Her record release party will be on Sunday night at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood for those who might be interested in seeing her perform. I’ll be there of course 🙂

Also see previous post here.

[disclosure: Shaheen is a friend] Continue reading →

From the Los Angeles Times (free registration required):

Tehmina Mehta, the matriarch described as the quiet strength of a classical music family that encompassed her late husband, Mehli, and sons Zubin and Zarin Mehta, has died. She was 96. Mehta died Friday in Los Angeles of natural causes…Her late husband perhaps offered the greatest assessment of Tehmina Mehta when he told The Times in 1984: “Though her body is frail, her mind is stronger than all of us put together. She’s the center of our family and the one person who holds it all together.” [Los Angeles Times]

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Everyone knows that all real musicians hit the ashram at some point in their existence. They also hit rehab, but that’s totally unrelated to the following passage from Rolling Stone’s cover story about Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo:

Radical extremes are what Cuomo has made his life from, and in the context of his history, the Either Way I’m Fine era isn’t all that outrageous. It even makes some sense given his childhood, which was spent on ashrams — first at the Zen Center in upstate New York and, after his father left the family when he was five (he eventually settled in Germany for a while as a suffragan bishop in a Pentecostal church), at “Woodstock guru” Swami Satchidananda’s Yogaville commune in Connecticut. Everyone was a vegetarian, and no one raised his voice or cursed. Cuomo didn’t like it much. He declared himself a metalhead at eleven and started playing Kiss covers with the neighborhood kids. “I was only interested in Slayer and Metallica then,” says Cuomo. “I still love that music, but now I have so much appreciation for what my parents’ generation did for opening up our country to Eastern philosophy and raising me like that. I feel so lucky.” [Rolling Stone]

Rolling Stone: Weezer’s weird world

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It’s desh-hop most spectacular: Karmacy’s performing their latest stuff at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan this Saturday. Chee Malabar takes the stage, and Rekha DJs the afterparty. Karmacy is also giving out free CDs of their latest album, The Movement.

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