M.I.A.: "Bird Flu"

At first I thought “Bird Flu” was an awareness campaign for some Sri Lankan virus, but in accordance with M.I.A.’s tendency to reject any form of straightforward, passive observation, the flu is in fact something spread by the music itself. One look at the video which features M.I.A. dancing with the children of a small village in the south of India, shot by renowned director Deepa Mehta, establishes the Tamil warrior as someone who would rather be right in the thick of the global struggle than sit on the sidelines simply talking about inequality and oppression.

The lyrics speak of a general kind of transgression (“Credentials are boring / I burned them at the burial ground”), violence (“Making bombs with rubber bands”), and some vaguely confrontational nonsense (“Bird flu gonna get you / Made it in my stable”). None of that really matters, of course, since, even more than on her outstanding debut Arular (2005), the message of “Bird Flu” is in its rhythm, which departs from her electro/grime beats in favour of dense Samba and a Boredoms-like sense of constant foreword momentum. No refrains here; only an onslaught of percussion, whooping war cries, and a chorus of children filling the spaces between her tireless delivery.

While M.I.A.’s political roots suggest an affinity with so-called “conscious hip-hop,” this is way more raw and primal than that; her platform is less about affecting the intellect than it is celebrating the freedom to cross cultures through music itself. Her refusal to compromise is evident in the lack of any specific style or political agenda here, not to mention that despite her solo credit on the track’s production (no Diplo or Timbaland here, evidently) the track nevertheless reflects a global experience. While much has been said about how M.I.A. embodies the increasing globalization of music, “Bird Flu” is both democratic and fiercely independent.