M.I.A.
Kala
(hear it)

You can read about music, like recent albums by MIA and by TV On the Radio, which is just too hard for commoners - the journalists always say "they may soon alienate the audience they found with last year's Bog Days" or "if you can hear past the grating surface you may find a heart beating in time with your own, on Mustard Gun by Dalulla." It bothers me that these musics are being placed at the fringe - what will last year's audience do with Glenn Branca's 8th Symphony, or with Mariane Amacher's difference-tone music, or even with Tom Ze scratching his teeth on a balloon, if they can't be trusted to follow along with TV On the Radio? I mean, Rolling Stone even called Kanye West progressive. I cancelled my subscription soon after that issue, the M. Anderson Children's Fund and their perennial phone calls seeking donations so that they can make more phone calls be damned. Kanye West samples some synthy 80's technopop and buys himself another year of critical acclaim?

The point should be that creators like MIA and TV On the Radio are gateways, through which the fringe communicates to the mainstream. If they can stomach it, the fringe can get something back through that channel, even if it's just a few more people listening to their music - but hopefully the Keith Rowes of the world let themselves enjoy or even make the occasional "Bamboo Banga". I need to admit that Kanye West, too, or his equal in mistakenly attributed progressivity Madonna, is mainstreaming a certain outlying sound into the living rooms of ex-frat boys and their families.

In the liner notes for Kala, MIA says that she is going to be buying an island (one "better than Guantamo Bay") for her family to live on. That's awesome, because she believes in herself. She doesn't admit, at least in the music thing that is Kala, that there is anything outside or difficult about this album.

In reality though, I suppose that MIA is not going to be bidding on the same real estate as the singer of "My Humps". Our world is formed by something simpler than this music. It's hard to hear the words on Kala. Also, I don't know a lot about dancing, but I suspect that few 8 year olds celebrated new years eve by jumping around to "XR2". The beats stop and start, and there's this one synth sound, like a fake trombone or something, that keeps distracting me from the bass. So there is something willfully difficult about it, and of course that's what makes it so great. I like that Casio saxophone.

bb, 11 jan 08