MIA

This article is about the singer. For further meanings see Mia .

MIA (2009)

Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam ( Tamil : மாதங்கி 'மாயா' அருள்பிரகாசம்; born July 18, 1975 in Hounslow , London , England ) is a British rapper , singer and music producer who appears under the abbreviation MIA , which means both missing in action and Missing in Acton stands.

Career

Her parents came from Sri Lanka , where they moved again, was as Maya six months old. Her father Arul Pragasam (after whom the first record Arular is named) became a founding member of the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS) , a militant Tamil organization. Due to this fact, he was hardly present in the family even in Arulpragasam's childhood - in nine years, according to Maya, he only came to visit three times. Her mother later moved back to London with ten-year-old Maya and her other daughter, where they first found accommodation in a refugee home. After graduating from high school, MIA studied art and film at London's Saint Martins College of Art . Then she worked as a painter.

When she was nominated for the alternative Turner Prize for a graffiti exhibition , Justine Frischmann , front woman of the alternative rock band Elastica , became aware of the young artist. She was initially commissioned to design the cover for the band's album The Menace . This was followed by the direction of the music video Mad Dog God Dam and in 2001 a documentary about the band's USA tour. The musician Peaches , who appeared in the opening act for the tour, showed her the musical possibilities of the groove box and encouraged her to make music herself. On her return to London, Arulpragasam began producing demo songs and initially aimed for a career as a producer and songwriter. However, when she couldn't find a singer, she decided to record the singing herself.

In 2003 the Showbiz Records label released the song Galang with an edition of only 500 records. The song quickly became popular in clubs and on university radio stations , it was spread more widely via file sharing and MIA, which had now adopted this stage name, went from an insider tip to an underground hit.

In 2005 she released her first album called Arular , which was named after her father. The second album Kala was released in 2007 and was named after her mother.

The music on their albums is somewhere between hip-hop , dancehall , grime and electro . She already worked several times with the American musician DJ Diplo - for example on the album Arular , on which Diplo produced the track Bucky Done Gun , which was also released as a single in 2005.

In 2009 she wrote and sang the song O… Saya for the film Slumdog Millionaire together with the Indian musician AR Rahman . The song was nominated for an Oscar for best movie song , won by the song Jai Ho from the same movie. Their most successful Single Paper Planes was also used in the film.

On October 15, 2010, she posted a link on Twitter to a new song called bedroomtothehallwaytotheroadtotheworld . Similar, previous releases of this type of her were 4thepeopleontheboat and facebookgooglemyspaceyoutube . In May 2014, MIA released a music video for the song Double Bubble Trouble , in which firearms from a 3D printer , so-called liberators, played a central role. The whole point of the action was to criticize the modern surveillance methods used by governments, under the slogan 1984 is now .

Private life

MIA was engaged to the billionaire and heir to Seagram Distilleries Europe, Benjamin Bronfman (* 1982), the founder of the record label "Green Owl Record". She has a son with him, Ikhyd Edgar.

Controversy

The music broadcaster MTV refused to play their video Sunshowers unless they remove a passage of text that relates to the Palestine Liberation Organization . In the song MIA rapped "Like PLO I Don't Surrender" - "I never give up like the PLO".

After creating the video for Paper Planes , MTV also replaced the recurring sequence of the four revolver shots with a more pleasing and less martial sound sample for reasons of youth protection . The artist was very upset about this.

In 2010 MIA posted a video for the song Born Free on the Internet. The art film shows the persecution of redheads as an example of racism and state repression. YouTube blocked the video for minors and cut two extremely brutal shots. As a result, MIA accused the video portal of being hypocritical because it found film blood worse than execution videos. She was referring to videos previously found by her on the portal, in which Sri Lankan soldiers shoot unarmed, naked men.

During an appearance with Madonna and Nicki Minaj at the 2012 Super Bowl , the rapper caused a sensation when she held a middle finger in the camera. The broadcasting NBC and the National Football League then apologized as a precaution to the audience. The gesture was aimed at her ex-fiancé Benjamin Bronfman and not the audience.

In the video for her song Borders , published in 2015, she wears a jersey from the French football club Paris Saint-Germain , on which the advertising slogan of their sponsor Emirates has been changed to Fly Pirates . The club's lawyers responded with a warning.

In April 2020, MIA was criticized in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic for helping spread false reports on social media that the virus was linked to 5G cellular technology .

Discography

Albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
2005	Arular	DE71 (1 week) DE	-	-	-	US190 (2 weeks) US
2007	Kala	DE93 (1 week) DE	AT74 (1 week) AT	CH74 (3 weeks) CH	UK39 silver (3 weeks)UK	US18th gold (45 weeks)US
2010	Maya	DE48 (1 week) DE	AT53 (2 weeks) AT	CH27 (2 weeks) CH	UK21 (2 weeks) UK	US9 (7 weeks) US
2013	Matangi	-	-	CH61 (1 week) CH	UK64 (1 week) UK	US23 (7 weeks) US
2016	AIM	DE55 (1 week) DE	AT74 (1 week) AT	CH24 (2 weeks) CH	UK63 (1 week) UK	US66 (1 week) US

Singles (selection)

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
2007	Jimmy Kala	-	-	-	UK66 (1 week) UK	-
2008	Paper planes Kala	DE76 (11 weeks) DE	AT51 (8 weeks) AT	-	UK19th platinum (28 weeks)UK	US4th × 3 Triple platinum (20 weeks)US
2010	XXXO Maya	-	-	-	UK26 (4 weeks) UK	-
2012	Bad Girls Matangi	-	-	CH61 (1 week) CH	UK43 silver (6 weeks)UK	-

More singles

• 2003: Galang
• 2004: Sunshowers
• 2004: Galang
• 2005: Bucky Done Gun
• 2005: Galang '05
• 2007: Boyz
• 2010: Born Free
• 2015: Borders
• 2016: Go Off
• 2016: Bird Song

Collaborations

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
2009	O ... Saya Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack	-	-	-	-	US93 (1 week) US	with AR Rahman
2012	Give Me All Your Luvin ' MDNA	DE8 (12 weeks) DE	AT11 (9 weeks) AT	CH6 (11 weeks) CH	UK37 (3 weeks) UK	US10 gold (10 weeks)US	feat. Madonna & Nicki Minaj

Further collaborations

• 2005: Nookie (with Jamesy P & Jabba )
• 2007: Sound of Kuduro (with Buraka Som Sistema , DJ Znobia , Saborosa & Puto Prata )
• 2009: Bang (with Rye Rye )

swell

1. ↑ MIA's baby's name revealed in NME, March 23, 2009
2. ↑ Robert Wheaton: London Calling - For Congo, Columbo, Sri Lanka. PopMatters , May 6, 2005; archived from the original on January 24, 2009 ; Retrieved February 13, 2012 . 
3. ↑ Miranda Sawyer: MIA: 'I'm here for the people' . In: The Observer , Guardian Media Group, June 13, 2010. Retrieved July 23, 2010. 
4. ↑ Tomorrow Bromell, Cedar Pasori: MIA's Top 10 Art Moments. February 13, 2013, accessed December 3, 2017 . 
5. ^ Richard Harrington: MIA, No Loss for Words. The Washington Post , September 16, 2005, accessed February 13, 2012 . 
6. ↑ http://bedroomtothehallwaytotheroadtotheworld.com/
7. ^ Dan: MIA tweets brand new track / bizarrely awesome visual experience. neontapedeck, October 15, 2010, accessed on January 23, 2018 (English). 
8. ^ Andrian Kreye: Provocation is followed by censorship. In Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 29, 2010.
9. ↑ Here MIA gives her billionaire ex the finger. In: Blick , February 8, 2012.
10. ↑ Daniel Bax: Music that crosses borders. In: Amnesty Journal, August / September 2017 edition, p. 69.
11. ↑ Jim Waterson: "Influencers among 'key distributors' of coronavirus misinformation" theguardian.com April 7, 2020
12. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
13. ↑ ^{a b c} Music Sales Awards: UK US

Web links

Commons : MIA  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• MIA on Tumblr
• MIA on Myspace
• MIA in the Internet Movie Database (English)