M.I.A. explains how her Sri Lankan background drew her to music: “I’m destined to be more than this”
British rapper and singer M.I.A. is an exceptional yet controversial artist. Signed to XL Records as a teenager in 2004, the musician was one of the first UK acts to Garner public attention through the Internet. M.I.A. is most known for her 2008 hit, ‘Paper Planes,’ which gained international fame following its release.
Born in the UK, M.I.A. is of Sri Lankan descent and, as a child, lived between London and Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. However, as a Tamil, the vocalist was greatly affected and eventually displaced following the Sri Lankan Civil War.
However, it was her initial upbringing on the Indian subcontinent that she believes gave her an interest in music. During an in-depth conversation about her life, the ‘Galang’ musician expressed how, in her early years, she didn’t feel like she had a deep passion for music. Still, upon arriving in the UK, she realised it was a big part of her life.
Speaking about her love for Sri Lanka as a child, M.I.A. revealed while, although she loved it she wanted to leave, stating, “I did love the life I had in Sri Lanka. But at the same time, my uncle says that apparently when he came to visit us in Jaffna, I was holding on to his leg going, ‘I’m destined to be more than this, take me with you.’ And dragging on the floor when he was trying to leave.”
She continued, “I don’t remember that but he said that that’s what I used to be like all the time. Every time somebody foreign came to our town, that I would run after the car and be like, ‘Take me with you!'”
When M.I.A. landed in the UK in 1976, she was young and even when she became a teenager she still didn’t feel an urge to get pinto the music industry immediately. The ‘Bad Girls’ rapper was primarily focused on the visual arts and film while she was in college. Still, as she matured she found herself wanting to pursue a career as a recording artist.
Opening up about what eventually drew her to music, M.I.A. told Kaleem Aftab, “Music was instant, and it was cheap. I never realised I would have a natural affinity for it. I came to it when I was old. It didn’t even cross my mind that I’d be musical.”
She continued, “In the documentary Matangi/Maya/MIA, you can see all the different ways that I’m creating music, but I think it just stems from the sounds that I heard when I was a child in Sri Lanka being really important to me because they kept me entertained.”
Her Sri Lankan heritage plays a lot into who M.I.A. is as a musician. In 2018, the Matangi creator unveiled that when choosing her stage name, the Sri Lankan took inspiration from a tragic family incident that helped to shape her early life.
Sharing another heartfelt story about her time in the country, she shared, “M.I.A. came to be because of my missing cousin. I wanted to make a film about where he was since he was M.I.A. (Missing in Action) in Sri Lanka. We were the same age, went to the same schools growing up. I was also living in Acton at the time. So I was living in Acton looking for my cousin missing in action.”