The Angry Voice

EACH OF BRITISH SINGER AND rapper M.I.A. aka Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam’s three identities are namechecked in the title of Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., a new documentary made by her college friend Steve Loveridge.

- Amit Gurbaxani

To relatives in Sri Lanka, she’s known as Matangi. She’s Maya to friends in London, where she grew up after her family moved to the UK as refugees in the mid-1980s. And, of course, to millions of fans across the world, she’s M.I.A. One of modern music’s most provocative personalities, M.I.A. has stood out for her mosaic compositional style that mashes together genres and sounds from around the globe, and her fearlessness as a political commentator who would rather speak her mind than sell a few more records.

Screened at the recently concluded Mumbai Film Festival, Matangi/ Maya/M.I.A. is more about the person than her music. It opens with her responding to the accusation that she is a ‘problematic pop star’, to which she says she would have become “a drug addict” if she didn’t express herself. The complication with M.I.A., Loveridge suggests, is that she can’t help but express herself; she has no filter or internal ‘stop’ button.