We wanna send you and a friend to see M.I.A.

M.I.A. – Once there was a girl named Matangi. This was 5000 years ago. Her father was an untouchable fearsome fighter and was a sage who gained sublime power through ascetic practice over thousands of years, and Matangi became known as a goddess of music and spoken word; she wasn’t a warrior but rather a minister sometimes referred to as the Queen of Queens. She spoke truth to power by communicating from the heart, if we’re not speaking from the heart our words are false and lack meaning. Matangi is often depicted carrying a sword in her battle to protect promise of freedom that words possess and the intrinsic value of that ideas contain; she also carries a parrot, a bird smart enough to say something but not intelligent enough to know what it’s saying, a reminder to humankind of the inherent danger in all our babbling communications. Matangi is the only goddess who didn’t live in the clouds or in a palace, she made her temple as a shack in the ghetto where she walked in the street with outcasts and undesirables to deepen her understanding of what pollutes our society, not just detritus and effluvia but the harsh sonics, foul speech and hateful thoughts that poison us daily. Her mudra is two raised middle fingers with the hands locked in a sort of lovers embrace, her mantra is Aim, hers is the path of inner thought manifested in an artistic way but this energy can take any form, any of the 64 forms of artistry known as Kala.

Once there was a girl named Mathangi, let’s call her Maya. Maya grew up on Temple Road in a tough town called Jaffna, where she learned to sing and dodge the bullets of soldiers who sometimes shot out the windows of her school. She knew her father was a freedom fighter for people who could not fight, she never saw him, she was raised by her mother and the way things go grew up to be a rapper who made her home in cities, in London, in Los Angeles, in New York City.

Thursday, November 02, 2017 | Fox Theatre | Tickets can be purchased here