British singer and rapper (born 1975)
Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, MBE (born 18 July 1975), known by the stage name M.I.A., is a British artist, film maker, singer, songwriter, rapper, activist, visual artist, humanitarian, record producer, graphic designer, photographer, fashion icon, and refugee icon. She is often described as one of the most influential artists of the 21st century, covering multicultural and countercultural, convention defying themes and utilizing a range of genres in her music to form a unique avant-garde sound, and for having revolutionized indie/underground/independent/subcultural and mainstream music and culture since her rise to prominence.
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I used to see songwriting like editing a film or something. You can edit music like you can edit a film. Or if I was painting or making a picture or something, that night I could sit down and write a song. I think it really helps to break things up. Sometimes when you sit down to write songs, you write three or four songs in a row feeling the same sort of vibe. But if you stop in-between that time and change something, you break the pattern – you prevent yourself from unconsciously falling into a format.
I performed at a show at the MoMA. There was this big dinner there, and I was seated in this hall with the mayor of New York and all these extremely wealthy art-supporting and art-buying people. There was a piece of work hanging in the hall-it was a fan. This fan was supposed to swing by the momentum of its own propeller. So, while we were having dinner, the fan was stopped, and the guy next to me, a curator at P.S.1, said, "Look, this is what art symbolizes today." Like, that piece of art is supposed to be moving, but just to have dinner we've stopped the art. That's what New York is like today. You can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop. The stuff on the street is a lot more interesting.
I think I just kind of thought about all the artists that I really respected throughout the - just any genre of music really and I think everybody that I respected and liked. They were just them. You know, they're people who always stuck to who they were, and were true and honest about who they were. So I think that kind of gave me a real like confidence to just stick at it. Just thinking about people like Bjork - you know, I don't know, Bob Dylan, you know artists that truly were strong in themselves.
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