2023 Charity Shop Purchases #7 - M.I.A. - Arular
Pitlochry is a small tourist town just north of Perth on the A9.Like many towns and villages of its size it has a couple of charity shops.They tend to contain the usual suspects when it comes to CDs although over the years I've picked up one or two more exotic ones there.
Previous unusual finds there have included Natacha Atlas and Bally Sagoo.This time around I came away with a couple of CDs by the British Rapper Mathangy (Maya) Arulprgasam better known as M.I.A.
One was her 2005 debut album Arular on the XL- Interscope label. The album's title is the political code name used by her father Arul Pragasam who was involved with Tamil militant groups and themes of conflict and revolution feature heavily in the lyrics and the artwork.Despite that is is quite light and bouncy with a mixture of hip hop, dance and more traditional music.
Whereas is sounds like pop it also addresses important issues. Sunshowers, for example, has references to snipers, murder and the PLO and was written as a response to the Tamil Tigers being seen as terrorists in some quarters.
The album was critically acclaimed receiving a nomination for the Mercury Prize and being listed in many of the Best of the Year features in magazines and papers.
Good album. She's got some great songs after that one too- Paper Planes most famously but Born Free is a stunner too. Dodgy views on vaccines unfortuantely.
ReplyDeleteYup terrific record. Didn't know about the dodgy vaccine views. Swc.
ReplyDeleteWhat Adam said, though I pretty much lost track after the Maya album. Good tunes, shame about the views.
ReplyDeleteDitto from me re the contributions from the three comrades above.
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