transcript

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MARCO WERMAN: The story of the Sri Lankan Civil War may be a bit clearer if you'd been listening to some of the hottest dance music to hit American shores in recent years. Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam, better known as MIA there. She is the British-born daughter of Sri Lankan Tamils who moved back to their home country when she was six months old.

MIA: [Singing].

WERMAN: MIA's father was the founding member of a Tamil student group working to create an independent Tamil state. The family was on the run from the government in Sri Lanka so MIA and her mother moved around a lot on the island. She rarely saw her father and when her family moved back to London in the 80s, they were initially housed as refugees. Those experiences left MIA with a profound sense of what it meant for a minority population to be without a home, and a lot of her music has pivoted on those issues.

MIA: [Singing].

WERMAN: The hit tune "Paper Planes" came from MIA's second album. She says it's a song about blue collar workers around the world who slog all day and just want to come home to their families. The song was also featured in "Slumdog Millionaire." But Paper Planes made MIA a lightning rod last August.

DELON: Rapping.

WERMAN: As Sinhalese rapper in Sri Lanka named DeLon remixed the tune, with his own words, accusing MIA of supporting terrorism.
DELON: Rapping.

WERMAN: In the post-9/11 world, just equating MIA with the Tamil Tigers and terrorism led MTV to censor the song replacing gunshots with innocuous popping sounds, and even removing the world "weed." MIA was incensed by the whole episode but she seems to have weathered the storm. It helps, I suppose, that "Paper Planes" hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Dance Chart and was on the Top 20 Singles Charts in Canada, Belgium, Denmark, and Israel and got that extra boost from Slumdog Millionaire.

MIA: [Singing].

WERMAN: This is PRI.

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