Nr. 26 – M.I.A.

M.I.A, born Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam in London, is a controversial artist who experiments with a lot of different genres, such as hip hop, dance, world music, electronic and alternative music. She was recently ranked as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Both of her parents have Sri Lankan Tamil descent and for a few years of M.I.A.’s childhood the family lived in Sri Lanka where her father was a political activist. Because of her father’s commitment to a political Tamil group the family was endangered and eventually M.I.A.’s mother moved back to London with the children as refugees of the Sri Lankan Civil War. M.I.A.’s upbringing in Sri Lanka during the civil war is probably one of the main reasons of her political commitment and urge to speak up for injustice in the world. She is constantly challenging our views and raising debates with her songs and videos. One of her latest videos, the video to the song Born Free was banned from YouTube and MTV because of violent scenes, and therefore raised an even bigger debate than the political statement behind it. Why is she cool? She stays true to her commitments and fights for those whose voices rarely get heard.