HIGH FIVE

jag är helt fashionerad av  Maya Arulpragasam ( M.I.A) hon har sån attityd både i kläder och sång en riktigt electroatrist som typ släppt årets bästa skiva enligt mig.
Shes a london girl to .. yeah !

citat från maya - "Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs ... Every bit of music out there that's making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked.

taget ur ett engelskt magasin:

A rough start

Arulpragasam relocated from her native Sri Lanka to London with her mother, sister and brother at the age of 10-but hers isn't a typical tale of South Asian immigration to the West. Arulpragasam's life in war-torn Sri Lanka was one of constant secrecy and scraping by. She never knew her father, one of the founding members of Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant guerrilla group formed in 1976 with the goal of gaining political independence for Sri Lanka's minority Tamil population. "We saw him once a year, for 10 minutes at a time. My mum said, ?That's your uncle-your dad is dead.' It was to protect us," she explains, from the police interrogations at school.         

Arulpragasam quickly learned the price of being Tamil among a primarily Sinhalese population, and of being the daughter of such a notorious figure. "We lived in hiding for so long. We were just moving from village to village and from house to house. Nobody wanted to put us up; we were untouchable. Everybody knew about us in Sri Lanka, and nobody wanted to deal with us because we brought so much heat. The army would follow [us wherever we'd go]. We were living in big-time poverty, stealing mangoes off someone else's tree," she remembers.

Then, in 1986, when the civil war escalated and many of Arulpragasam's friends and family died in the crossfire, her mother collected Arulpragasam and her siblings and successfully sought refugee status in Britain. "When we got to England, we were safe. That's all it was," she says. And it really wasn't much more than that-Arulpragasam's family was placed in a notoriously racist, crime-ridden housing estate in southwest London, where she endured daily racist abuse. Her mother took various jobs to supplement the "bags of clothes and vouchers" the government gave them, eventually using her knowledge of sewing to stitch medals for the British royal family. "They [the royal medals] used to come out of this flat, in an estate," she laughs. Since Arulpragasam didn't know any English when she arrived, her classmates "assumed I was really thick and dumb"-even though she was academically ahead of other students by leaps and bounds. "I could do any equation standing on my head," she says smugly. And she didn't fit in with the thriving South Asian community, either, which she encountered when she went to high school in west London at 16. "I met a community of Bengalis, Indian, Pakistanis, everybody. They were having a great time ... I spent time hanging out, but I was this Sri Lankan. Sri Lankans were the newest batch of brown people-they only started coming late 80s or early 90s, so there wasn't a community that I could click into."

I'm just the alternative to that ?coffee table' music. I'm the flipside to what Norah Jones is doing.

And so it was music that caught Arulpragasam's attention in otherwise gray England. "It was 1987, and hip hop was just hitting England. When I got here, all I knew was Michael Jackson. I started listening to the radio and discovered hip hop and then dancehall," she says. That discovery changed her life, influencing the beats she would spin years later. When she was younger and faced the language barrier, she turned to music to communicate. "All I could do was dance. At every celebration or party, they asked me to do a dance routine. They kind of gave me respect for art and music and stuff." 

Artist in the making

Music may have been her salvation, but it was art that launched her career. Arulpragasam enrolled in the prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, studying fine arts and film. She quickly emerged as a star for her unique stencil graffiti boasting Tamil iconography. She was shortlisted for the Alternative Turner Prize, and art publisher Pocko packaged a collection of her art, which she named M.I.A, or Missing in Action. She chose it because the initials sounded phonetically like her first name, and because "so many of my cousins are missing in action in Sri Lanka," she explains, as she sprays her signature stencils on white labels for a limited release of her single. The moniker stuck, and she performs under the name M.I.A to this day.

Her college career led her back to Sri Lanka for a painful trip during which she set out to create a documentary about the political repression and violence she had lived through. The experience was more than she expected. "It was really difficult-I totally forgot that, in the 15 years I'd been in England, I'd grown up ... Every army solider there thought I was a threat to the nation ... There is no right to live for a Tamil person in the constitution," she says. She recalls being interrogated and harassed. "In Sri Lanka, you hide your face, don't talk to anyone, just bow your head, don't speak. You're just a robot with no life, no hope. I was just crying the whole time. I had a message from the Ministry of Defense, a letter from British embassy, and I was [still] getting harassed, even though I was so obviously westernized. There were women getting raped in broad daylight and people were getting raped by the army soldiers. It was just havoc."

I really need to feel informed about what's going on, because as much as I love to know what's cool, and what colors are in this season, and what you should wear on your feet, at the same time, I need to know what's going on.

When she returned to England, she tried to put the documentary together, but, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, felt that it would be misconstrued as propaganda. Instead, Arulpragasam turned her attention to making a documentary about electronic shock-rocker Peaches, a fellow Saint Martins grad. It was Peaches who introduced her to the Roland TR 505, an unsophisticated drum machine. The 505 revolutionized Arulpragasam's life, luring her to spend hours experimenting with beats and creating vocals. Soon after her introduction to the 505, she went on vacation to the Caribbean island of Bequia, where the sights and sounds of the island inspired her to experiment further. "I was bored and tried to write a song," she remembers.

Claim to fame

That product of boredom, a cheap beat machine and a 4-track recorder evolved into the song "Galang," an exuberant explosion of dancehall, hip hop and electronic beats mixed with undecipherable vocals and street slang. And if Arulpragasam's life story seems remarkable, then why shouldn't her social circle be extraordinary, as well? In art school, she had designed indie Brit band Elastica's The Menace album sleeve, "and that's how I met loads of musicians," she says. It's unclear just how she rubbed elbows with Pulp's Steve Mackey, but he is credited with discovering the song and co-producing it. "Galang" became a fast hit among DJs in Britain, and soon, recording companies were clamoring for Arulpragasam's attention. XL Recordings, home to Prodigy, Badly Drawn Boy and the White Stripes, won the bidding war and signed her on the spot. Her full-length album with XL is due out in January. So far, she's also made a lush video for "Sunshowers," which she filmed in the jungles of South India with acclaimed director Rajesh Touchriver of In the Name of Buddha fame.

Arulpragasam doesn't have any formal musical training, but she insists that's beside the point: "I use the technology around me to make music. It's not about what you use. It's about what sound you get out at the end of the day. My music's got rhythm, beat, bass line. Vocals that are different. It's not really about vocal gymnastics. It still has an urgency ... I'm just the alternative to that ?coffee table music'-I'm the flipside to what Norah Jones is doing."

But even if her music sounds less serious than Norah Jones' ballads, the message is certainly more so. "When I was writing music and writing lyrics, I didn't want to write about love songs and stuff, because it really didn't feel like my order of priorities. I thought, ?OK, there's sh*t going down-what can I do to make myself more useful?' I just always wanted to be a really useful human being," she says. "I really need to feel informed about what's going on, because as much as I love to know what's cool, and what colors are in this season, and what you should wear on your feet, at the same time, I need to know what's going on," she adds. It's unclear whether she's being sarcastic about keeping up with the trends, or if that truly is a part of her complex personality. After all, her songs are tinged with thoughtful words looped over carefree beats. She explains the paradox with genetics: "My mum is a saint, and my dad is insane. That's exactly what I am-I'm a split personality between my mum and my dad. I look at them both, and they hate each other. So this is what you get, a freak, a nutty, creative person who's thoughtful," she laughs.

With the "Galang" single in stores and her full-length album on the way, Arulpragasam has come a long way from the jungles of war-torn Sri Lanka. She credits her success to her cultural background. "My mates always say to me, why aren't you mad? Or having therapy or something? I think, coming from where I come from, you just have to get on with it. That's what life is. You just get on with it. You can't be indulgent enough to whine about stuff. It's about being useful. I don't have time to get mad or get bitter or depressed or anything. I just want to have a good ending to the story." It seem like she's already written it herself.


SHE SO AWSOME.

hello
i onsdags en vecka sedan åkte jag hem till sverige och hälsade på
eftersom jag var ledig från onsdagen till söndag, så då passade jag på..
natta, frida och tess kom och hämtade mig på skavsta flygplats och på löpet fick vi en böter på 500 kr, ståg lite olägligt fast de kunde man verkligen inte se, stod inte ens några skyltar.. men iaf vägen hem pumpade musik.. körde runt lite i stan hälsade på mina kära.. sedan drog vi till deli och åt och drack lite med massa tjejer . alla mina tjejer. mysigt!
sedan vart klockan mycket? eh 12 var kockan och alla drog hem, jag drog med..sov sköönt..
sedan var jag på torsdagen och hälsade på massa och sedan var de after work "fest"  i spiralen så jag följde med eftersom att jag jobbar op bik bok.. sedan  bar de av till kvällen.. förfest hemma hos mig  och hhugo som vanligt.
och fredag lördag förfest hos mig. och ut gamla vanliga norrköping.. låter som om jag varit borta i flera år ..
men sen hem iaf.. och nu är jag här i london igen och de var så skönt att komma tillbaka för  norrköping är inte roligt har jag insett, samma skit varje dag varje gång varje år, samma inriger samma falskhet samma allt :) men jag ska inte klaga så mycket, för jag har hem längtan väldigt ofta och blir depp ..men går över fort tack och lov, saknar ju vissa personer mer än andra. ush!  som mamma, ush vad jag saknar henne.. önska hon vore här.
Sussane börjar jobba lite smått nu mer än halvtid så jag har börjat ta hand om dom helt själv nu och bara vi tre..

imorgon är det en lång dag, ska vara ensam med barnen tfrån 8 till halv 9 på kvällen som idag, fast idag hade hannah dagis så då hade jag tid att fixa och trixa medans alexander sov och sådär.. men imorrn blir det fullt upp med bara dom..

nu har jag pratat med jessica w och hon ska komma hit en vecka :) och bo hos mig, de ska bli så kul..
jag längtar redan.. men tror de blir i maj eller slutet av april.. äntligen någon som kommer och hälsar på mig. blir så glad:)
och sedan på midsommar helgen så kommer  pascal syster claudia malin och nån mer kanske så då blir det att fira med dom, tack och lov vad glad jag är att de kommer hit. saknar dom .. 

I helgen ska jag och lisa ut :) kommer några hon känner som vi ska festa med? tror jag! annars går jag ut..

imorgon kommer mamma hem ifrån thailand, hon har varit borta i två veckor, och jag är så avensjuk..
jag har lite planer på vad jag kommer göra när jag kommit hem ifrån London, jag sitter och planerar för fullt..
jag har tönkt komma hem i fyra månader, tjäna ihop rätt myclet med cash och sen åka till en varmt ställe, och vara där i 3-4 månader antaglgen blir det väl thailand.. men vill hellre göra de när natalie ar slutat skolan så hon kan följa med ett tag.. eller så kommer jag hem och pluggar och tar en kurs sedan åker efter ett år..
aja de är ju bara tankar och funderingar eftersom jag inte ens vet vem jag ska åka med till thailand.. nessa va kanske på g? hoppas..

ne nu ska jag lägga mig ner och kolla på film eller läsa gossip girls bok. de va ju tydligen ännu mer böcker än 8 st så är på min 8:e nu tror jag..
sov gott, gott folk..
ciao

"There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, and who always will. So don't worry about people in your past, there's a reason they didnt make it into the future."