Spring Break
M.I.A.'s Kala tears the roof off
Maxwell Matthews
Issue date: 9/28/07 Section: Entertainment
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09/28/07 - There isn't really a subtle way to go about this, but I encourage absolutely everyone, no matter what your musical tastes are, to buy M.I.A.'s new album Kala. History will most likely prove me wrong (I've found pessimism to be a good bet for most situations), but I have a very powerful feeling that Kala is a watershed album for M.I.A.
For those who don't know already, M.I.A., née Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, is a British singer/rapper/songwriter/producer of Tamil descent who has, over the past three or four years, synthesized a stunning electronic gumbo composed of hip hop, electro, Jamaican dancehall, dashes of punk and a myriad of other international musical styles.
Other musicians have trod the same "World Beat" ground that she has, from Joni Mitchell and George Harrison in the early 1970s to David Byrne and Brian Eno at the turn of the 1980s. The difference? M.I.A's amalgamations actually do justice to world rhythm's excitement in a way that white art rockers have never really been able to pull off.
Although few would place M.I.A. under the banner of "rock 'n' roll," Kala is a superb rock 'n' roll album in the classic sense: It is fun, deceptively unskilled, messy and subversively spectacular. Listening to it four or five times you say "Okay, this is complete awful - the songs don't go anywhere. Is she speaking English? And what's with her singing voice?"
Until, that is, you finally notice yourself shamelessly squawking along with the hook-laden, Bollywood love jam, "Jimmy." Tuneless-ness has been acceptable in popular music, at least since Bob Dylan, and Kala is proof that rock did not die- it simply moved to more fertile ground, namely outside the United States.
The album kicks off with "Bamboo Banga," a minimalist groove that builds into an unstoppable rump-shaker built upon a chant of the first lines of Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner." That is only the beginning of the adventure. Suddenly, we're thrown in a whole new world where avant garde funk, South Asian drums and didgeridoos collide seamlessly.
For those who don't know already, M.I.A., née Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, is a British singer/rapper/songwriter/producer of Tamil descent who has, over the past three or four years, synthesized a stunning electronic gumbo composed of hip hop, electro, Jamaican dancehall, dashes of punk and a myriad of other international musical styles.
Other musicians have trod the same "World Beat" ground that she has, from Joni Mitchell and George Harrison in the early 1970s to David Byrne and Brian Eno at the turn of the 1980s. The difference? M.I.A's amalgamations actually do justice to world rhythm's excitement in a way that white art rockers have never really been able to pull off.
Although few would place M.I.A. under the banner of "rock 'n' roll," Kala is a superb rock 'n' roll album in the classic sense: It is fun, deceptively unskilled, messy and subversively spectacular. Listening to it four or five times you say "Okay, this is complete awful - the songs don't go anywhere. Is she speaking English? And what's with her singing voice?"
Until, that is, you finally notice yourself shamelessly squawking along with the hook-laden, Bollywood love jam, "Jimmy." Tuneless-ness has been acceptable in popular music, at least since Bob Dylan, and Kala is proof that rock did not die- it simply moved to more fertile ground, namely outside the United States.
The album kicks off with "Bamboo Banga," a minimalist groove that builds into an unstoppable rump-shaker built upon a chant of the first lines of Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner." That is only the beginning of the adventure. Suddenly, we're thrown in a whole new world where avant garde funk, South Asian drums and didgeridoos collide seamlessly.
