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M.I.A. Quotes
born 1975 England
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 c
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13 quotes
Kala is about my mum and her struggle–how do you work, feed your children, nurture them and give them the power of information?
Interview to URB (2007)
Who the hell is huntin' you?
I saw firsthand where the music we made ended up. It turned up in sterile bullshit clubs in LA, separated from the spirit we made it in.
Google’s more powerful than any government now – people think it’s God. They’re storing all our data and one day they’re going to turn against us.
My approach to politics is that I never said I'm smart. But why aren't I allowed to write about my experience?
Interview to Rolling Stone (2010)
When I come back to London, I feel really safe and familiar. But sometimes I feel like I'm on standby, waiting to go somewhere else – where something else is happening.
Interview to Metro (2007)
Can I get Control?
OK, let's go and explore the rest of the world, and how easy is it to put together music through found objects and stuff, and people, and ideas and certain electricity, certain environments.
Interview on Kala to Rolling Stone (2009)
I feel like I'm a fucking infomercial for issues around the world this year. I don’t want it to be like that though. I feel like for the first time I'm truly falling in love with music in its own right.
It's important for communities to be put together on a different basis. It's really shitty that we're taught to be really patriotic when 99 percent of the shit that we wear and we use and eat and everything comes from everywhere all the time, and musically, it's the same.
Interview on world music and culture mixing to Rolling Stone (2009)
I'm not sure, but music now should be like sonic massage. You want to really feel it, internally. The police [sic] use sound cannons at public protests that explode people’s insides with a single note – human beings have to come up with the opposite of that.
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.
I'm more of a realist, than a theorist
Video of Interview to Dazed & Confused magazine (2010)
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