It was the sound of the sample of “Straight to Hell” by the Clash that first drew me to “Paper Planes”, M.I.A.’s irresistible and ubiquitous alternative hip-hop track. Though one fine sampled loop alone cannot carry a tune. The lyrical thread of “Straight to Hell”, combined with Maya Arulpragasam’s insouciant rap style and slightly obscure lyrics, punctuated by pop, pop, pop gunshots and a percussive caching of a cash register, not only created controversy, but also built a mystery around the song. So away we go…

Mis-hearings are not unusual and whole points have been known to get lost when lyrics and melody are brilliantly unified in protest: Remember when “Born in the USA”, Bruce Springsteen’s story of a discarded veteran, was adopted by right wing concerns as a patriotic anthem(!)? That’s what I’m talking about, which could partly explain why “Paper Planes”, a send-up of stereotypes leveled at third-world immigrants, was ill-perceived: There is just not that much familiarity or empathy for the subject at hand, which can be enough motivation for an artist to write a song in the first place. Confusing matters further is the fact that Arulpragasam hails from London, though she was raised partly in Sri Lanka and in India by activist parents associated with the fight to liberate the Tamil region of their native country. Today, Arulpragasm makes her home in Brooklyn. Confusing? Well, not if you consider that Arulpragasam, as a refugee from a war-torn country, is just looking for a home. Who better to speak to the concerns of immigrants, a largely marginalized group of citizens who inhabit our cities across the globe?

Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger were branded communist sympathizers and put out of work when they sang songs about forgotten people from other lands. Bob Dylan sang of the injustices met by the poor and black at home, though when he famously retreated from rigorous protest music, he was criticized and lost a portion of his audience in return for his trouble. Yes, this business of protest music has been known to be a hassle, and much of the genre’s more potent and pointed music can get relegated to the underground; that “Paper Planes” was such a phenomenon contributes to its intrigue.

Arulpragasam dubs the song a satire, though it fits the categories of protest or empowerment anthem just as well; racial stereotypes get reclaimed and put into service as song lyric. She reckoned few would ever hear it, given her indie status at the time of its recording.

“It’s about people driving cabs all day and living in a shitty apartment and appearing really threatening to society. But not being so,” Arulpragasam told Entertainment Weekly. “Because, by the time you’ve finished working a 20-hour shift, you’re so tired you [just] want to get home to the family. I don’t think immigrants are that threatening to society at all. They’re just happy they’ve survived some war somewhere.”

As for the gunshots and cash register ring: “You can either apply it on a street level and go, ‘Oh, you’re talking about somebody robbing you and saying I’m going to take your money.’ But, really, it could be a much bigger idea: Someone’s selling you guns and making money. Selling weapons and the companies that manufacture guns—that’s probably the biggest moneymaker in the world.”

The Clash, Joe Strummer in particular, was known the world over for covering the human cost of empire-building in song. Opening with four bars of “Straight to Hell”, Arulpragasam couldn’t have picked a better melody to sample; it’s one of Strummer’s most celebrated lyrics, its verses devoted to the plight of the dispossessed. Not exactly sung (perhaps inspired by his new friend, poet Allen Ginsberg, who sat in on the Combat Rock sessions), “Straight to Hell” is a song to the outsider. It signifies where she stands in so-called “polite society,” whether cast-off North of England or in Vietnam: “It could be anywhere… any hemisphere… no man’s land and there ain’t no asylum here.”

The additional touch of a child’s chorus in M.I.A.’s song (“All I wanna do”) borrows from another important anthem: James Brown’s “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud.” The depth of that song’s impact catapulted Brown to a front seat in community leadership; M.I.A. herself has become a symbol of third world empowerment. (In somewhat related news, Lily Allen has recently released a child-like reading of “Straight to Hell” that samples “Paper Planes.”)

But the dignity of the immigrant as the subject of a song is hardly a new theme. In 1948, before Joe Strummer (aka John “Woody” Mellor) was born, his hero Guthrie wrote “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” The song concerned the treatment of 28 migrant farm workers, their deportation, and accidental demise in a plane crash as they were being returned to Mexico from Central California. Guthrie was struck by the fact that the immigrants were not mentioned by name in news reports (the vitals on the American flight crew got full coverage) and that they were buried in a mass, unmarked grave. He wrote the unidentified departed what started out as a poem: “Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, adiós mis amigos, Jesús y María.” Ten years later, schoolteacher Martin Hoffman set it to music. Popularized by Seeger, it is still sung and recorded, most famously by the Byrds, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, and Springsteen. “Deportee” remains standing not only as a eulogy, but as a statement on the lack of rights and the poor conditions faced by immigrant farm workers to this day.

It is safe to say that Strummer subconsciously called up Guthrie (“Some of us are illegal, and others not wanted”) when he jotted down “… There ain’t no need for ya. Go straight to hell, boys….” In his biography by Chris Salewicz, Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, he explains he wrote the song overnight at the Iroquois Hotel, once famous as a second home for rock ‘n’ roll bands of the era. Musically, the song came together unusually, as a group effort. “Just before the take, Topper said to me, ‘I want you to play this,’ and he handed me an R. White’s lemonade bottle wrapped in a towel,” says Strummer. “On the record you hear me standing in front of this bass drum swinging this towel, with this large lemonade bottle in it, whacking the front of the bass drum while the others record the backing track.”

“Combat Rock has some of the best tunes that we ever made on it. ‘Straight to Hell’ was one of our absolute masterpieces. But the band had to shatter after that record,” he said. Success contributed to hardliners the Clash giving up the ghost, but what they lost, 25 years later, was found when London called again in the form of M.I.A. Originally appearing on her 2007 album, Kala, “Paper Planes” pushed ahead in 2008 when it was featured in the trailer for the stoner movie, Pineapple Express, as well as in the musical montage sequence to Slumdog Millionaire (the latter film arguably introducing a portion of mass American audiences to the multi-dimensionality of the third world). Downloads of “Paper Planes” soared and an uncensored video became a YouTube sensation; to date it has sold over two million singles in the US and is a good bet to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year this week. I’m betting Joe Strummer and Woody Guthrie would have quite liked it, too.

Watch: M.I.A.: “Paper Planes” [at youtube.com]

Watch: Bob Dylan and Joan Baez: “Deportee“

Tag
s: M.I.A., The Clash, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez

Read more from Origin of Song:

Cadillac Records: Silver Screen Fabrication

I Got My Radio On

A Change Is Gonna Come