M.I.A. (a few ways)

Slate takes the occasion of the upcoming release of Queen Latifah's latest album to speculate on the current paucity of female rappers. While it may be true that are aren't any prominent female rappers per se out there right now, there is certainly no shortage of interesting female artists in contemporary popular music today, many of whom are strongly influenced by hip hop, if they are not exactly card-carrying "rappers." (Where does one get such a card, by the way?)

Chief among these, as the article mentions, would be the fabulous M.I.A. I saw her this past summer at something called the 33rd Street Armory in Philly, which was a giant open building resembling an airplane hanger. The sound was deafening and the crowd was full of Drexel undergrads (if they weren't, in fact, actually high school students), but I dug it anyway. I hope that someone smarter than me is busy writing about her, figuring out the taxonomy of her influences and sources, and putting her in the context of the new world music movement, a movement very different from the tired Peter Gabriel/Paul Simon/LBM/Youssou N'Dour one of the 1980s. (At least, I'm tired of talking and teaching about that movement--interesting as it is. I can't imagine my students, most of whom were born 1989 or later, are interested in hearing much more about it, either.)

I wanted to teach M.I.A. in my world music survey class this past semester, but I realized I wouldn't have anything interesting to say other than, "Wow, isn't this song cool?" There's a time and a place for such unnuanced enthusiasm, but it probably ain't the classroom. However, I do think it's important that academics get hip to people like M.I.A., if for no other reason than, particularly at the universities I've been at, a sizable percentage of the student body is of South Asian descent. I was definitely conscious of the fact that the world music class that I taught focused very heavily on Africa and the African diaspora. Which is great. But it seems like we're missing out on teaching a huge part of the world (umm, the entire continent of Asia that isn't Tuvan throat-singing or karaoke)--and a huge percentage of our students. Of course, it's easier this way. There's material for teaching Umm Kulthum. There's material for teaching Graceland. There's material for teaching Youssou N'Dour. There's material for teaching the Pygmies. But too many of us who teach "world music," myself very much included, do not know enough about the contemporary music from around the world that our increasingly worldly students are grooving on. No more excuses. It's time we did something about that. But in the meantime, check out M.I.A.'s track, "Sunshowers."

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