Galang [SINGLE]

M.I.A.

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 28, 2004)
• Original Release Date: September 14, 2004
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Single
• Label: Xl Recordings
• ASIN: B0002VEOAY
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #313,244 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Track Listings

1. Galang

2. Sunshowers

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

At age 11, M.I.A. (aka Maya Arul) was a refugee of war. Her family was forced to flee Sri Lanka in the mid-80s when the Sinhala-Tamil conflict gripped the country. Quickly adapting to her new surroundings, she's moved from those dark days to the verge of stardom. Her debut self-released single, "Galang" sent shock waves through the UK and secured her a cover on US-based Fader Magazine in August 2004. It's fresh, twisted, and has a killer hook. Now available with a Diplo remix of the undeniably catchy "Sunshowers", M.I.A. is about to set the world on fire.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Infectious fresh sound, just not enough released yet!, March 5, 2005

By	Oddly Opinionated (Fresh, Clean-Scented New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

OK, I'm "too old to be listening to this kind of music" according to hip hop kids, but that's THEIR problem, not mine. MIA brings a freshness and infectious funkiness to her music that takes it not just one but many cuts above a lot of the recycled late-60's anger and low-creativity beats that fuel so much other hip hop. With most hip hop I feel like I've heard it before, 30 years ago and better. When I first heard MIA (this song, in fact) my head snapped up to attention so fast I nearly broke my neck. When will we get more, and more?

It's an awful thing to load into your personal music player because there you are on the subway trying to be one of the invisibles going to work with your clone-being earpods on and Galang starts and you start rocking then feet start to moving and suddenly you just don't care what anyone else thinks, your body just says "gotta move." It's not for those with a weakness for bopping. Good get ready to work with an attitude music.

And as to MIA and other critics talking about her "mongrel beats" and not knowing where it comes from - maybe, but I'll tell you what I hear. It's inner-city double-dutch jumprope beats. Bet you if I put it on a box on any playground where kids still work the ropes, it'll play forever there in the blur of spinning ropes.

Double-dutch hip-hop, that's what I think. She's her own genre.

Buy it, listen to it, bop to it. She's really good. It's hot.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maya's style deserves attention!, March 26, 2006

By	Jenny J.J.I. "A New Yorker" (That Lives in Northern Nevada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This track really got my attention. M.I.A.'s first record is great! It is such an interesting style of dance music and the politics intertwined in it make it intellectual too! Mainly though, this music will have you dancing and repeating the smart and catchy lyrics. M.I.A. has no qualms about mentioning bombs, guns, terrorists and racism in her songs.

Straddling the great musical divide, M.I.A. sticks her tongue out at the mainstream and moons the underground with a sound that both betrays and praises the music of her peers. She borrows from hip-hop, dancehall, reggaeton, electro-clash, drum 'n' bass and world music yet creates a sum different from the parts using little more than a drum machine and her own lyrical might.

Her debut album, Arular (XL/Beggar's Banquet), is a Masala of planet-rock beats and batucada cut ups set off by a delivery so cadent, it's the percussive force behind the album. M.I.A.'s most successful when she's letting loose over a dancehall rhythm, her cockney-Jamaican accent punctuating each low-end blast with proclamations of her prowess on the mike. Such is the nature of her MCing, which can be heard to blistering effect on the single "Fire Fire," on which she dismisses her peers, asserting, "Competition coming' up now/ Load up and fire, fire bo!" This is to say there's no match for M.I.A. Even comparable British MCs like Ms. Dynamite, The Streets and Dizzy Raskal fall short if only because they lack the sexual je ne se quoi that M.I.A. shamelessly exudes.

Moreover, where her countrymen exist solely within the British two-step tradition, M.I.A. is a welcome every woman coming off like a basement (Jamaican party) queen rocking a favela (Brazilian ghetto) bass line. All the while, hers is a patois that can only be heard on the streets of London, yet for all the musical globetrotting, M.I.A. has found a space that's all her own.

If you're not going to buy it, at least give it a listen... Maya's style deserves attention!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars do yourself a favor, January 4, 2005

By	R. dekoch "dekoch" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Galang is a great single. It's hard, twisted and I can't get it out of my head. I can't wait for a full-length.