When M.I.A. returns to Australia this month for Harvest Rock Festival and a string of headline shows, she’s doing it with renewed clarity — and a very specific intention.
“I want people to feel a celebration,” she says. “That’s what I want them to feel. I want them to feel good.”
For Maya Arulpragasam, the Sri Lankan-born, British-raised rapper, singer, and producer who turned global politics into pop anthems, this tour represents more than another run of festival dates — it’s a homecoming of sorts. Not to a physical place, but to an energy she’s been cultivating quietly since her last album and documentary cycle.
“I’m in the phase of celebrating life,” she says. “I’m in the phase of all those that are alive right now. We are just happy to be alive, and that’s the phase I’m in.”
Australia has always been part of M.I.A.’s story.
She’s played iconic festivals like Big Day Out and Laneway, bringing her fusion of hip-hop, electro-pop, and global sounds to audiences that were as curious as they were chaotic. But this visit, she says, feels different.
“It just feels like the right moment,” she explains. “Julian [Assange] was released and he’s accepted back in his home country and they’re supportive of him, and so that reflects the temperament of the Australian political landscape right now.”
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It’s a typically M.I.A. lens, one that connects art, activism, and energy. The release of the WikiLeaks founder, she says, symbolises a shift in Australia’s political climate, and it’s one that made her want to come back.
She’s also been struck by the activism she’s been seeing from afar. “After seeing all the protests in Sydney and the amount of people who turned up — so many young people, old people, every generation really just turning up — it’s kind of inspiring,” she says. “I’ve never really seen that in Australia much. It feels like a new state that’s happening.”
Maya’s relationship with Australia has always gone beyond music.
During our chat, she explains that her connection to the country runs deep; not just culturally, but ancestrally.
“I feel like Tamil people have Aboriginal DNA somewhere,” she says. “It’s thought that Tamil Dravidians in Sri Lanka have a mix of Aboriginal DNA. And the Indigenous names — there are Tamil words in them. I just think that thousands of years ago there was definitely travel going on.”
She dives into ancient geography with the kind of poetic logic that’s always defined her interviews. “They thought there was a land mass that connected Australia, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar — and then it sank. That’s why you only find lemurs in Madagascar, Sri Lanka, and on the west coast of Australia,” she says. “So whichever theory it is, I always have a connection to Australia beyond popular culture and all of that.”
It’s a fascinating perspective, one that blends history, mythology, and identity in a way only M.I.A. can. It’s clear that for her, returning to Australia isn’t just about performing, it’s about tapping into something ancient.
If her early career was defined by confrontation — calling out Western privilege, war, and surveillance culture — her current chapter is about reflection and renewal.
Her last album, 2022’s Mata, and the preceding 2018 documentary MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A., forced her to relive her past: her refugee background, her clashes with fame, and the controversies that followed her at times outspoken politics.
“I think it’s because I was writing Mata during the time the documentary came out,” she says. “It was really difficult to do press for the documentary, be around people who constantly ask about your past, and see it on film. And then you’re writing a new album and everyone around you is saying, ‘Remember who you are.’”
That kind of retrospection, she admits, can become a trap. “I think that influenced Mata quite a lot, the fact that I was writing it around that time,” she says. “But now I don’t have that. I have nothing in the past to reflect on. It’s all about the present and what’s happening now.”
That newfound clarity is shaping everything she does — and everything she doesn’t. “You have to write from a complete blank space,” she says. “A space of clarity. That’s the most important thing for me now — being completely clear. I’m very clear about my previous catalogue, but I’m also very clear about where I’m at right now.”
M.I.A. has never been afraid of shaking up polite conversation. Whether she’s calling out global inequality or flipping the bird during Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl Halftime Show — a moment that triggered international outrage and a multi-million-dollar lawsuit — she’s always embodied fearless rebellion.
But even those headline-making moments can’t eclipse her influence. Across two decades, she’s collaborated with some of the most visionary names in music, from Diplo, Blaqstarr, and Timbaland to Skrillex, Zayn, Travis Scott, Young Thug, and A$AP Rocky. Her sound — an unpredictable mash of hip-hop, electronic, dancehall, and global rhythm — has opened doors for a generation of boundary-pushing artists.
Long before “genreless” became a music-industry buzzword, M.I.A. was already living it. Long before “global pop” became a movement, she was fusing South Asian percussion with London grime. Long before artists like Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar were headlining with messages of empowerment, she was performing in front of projections of war zones.
Now, she says, people are finally catching up. “I just popped out to the shop and the girl there was like, ‘I really need your songs to raise my daughter, who’s 14. I’m playing all your songs to her — it’s the best way to introduce someone to all these heavy topics,’” she says.
That kind of encounter reinforces what M.I.A. has always believed: that music can shift consciousness. “People are coming around,” she says. “But it’s not so much that they’re coming around, it’s just that those spaces have been made. Immigration, poverty, religion, economics, abuse of power, female empowerment — these things have always existed. It’s just how you perceive it. Maybe it’s in the perception that people are starting to understand it more.”
She pauses, then adds, “People always say, ‘This is M.I.A.’s world right now, you should be out here doing more things.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, what’s the point?’ It’s already been articulated… you just put that song on, I have to keep moving.”
That sense of movement — both physical and philosophical — has always defined her art. But this time, the destination is joy. “Ultimately, we are going to fight and we are going to fight for the rights of people,” she says. “We are fighting for our freedom in order to feel happy and well. That’s what you want for everyone. That’s why you take to the streets, because you want that.”
Her new mission is to channel that energy through music rather than manifestos. “If you can contribute to that and make people feel good in that moment, then that’s a blessing if you have the ability to do that,” she says. “And right now I’m just grateful for that — that you can play some songs and make people feel good, because that’s the medium you chose. At the end of the day, you still chose music.”
That’s not to say the fire’s gone; if anything, it’s burning brighter, just in a new way. “I want my music to make people feel good or energised,” she says. “Sometimes when I feel like I don’t have energy, I put my music on and it switches me into a different zone. I know that’s what it must do for other people.”
She laughs. “I test it on myself all the time. And that’s what I want people to leave feeling. Before, I used to think of it more lyrically — now I take the whole thing in. If people are in a shit mood and they listen to something and it makes them get up or dance or feel like they can do something, kick open doors and do shit — then that’s great. That’s all you can hope for.”
“If people listen to your music and it makes them feel like they can do something,” she adds, “then that’s great. Because some music makes you chill out, some makes you want to smoke weed, some makes you cry — mine makes you want to get out there and do shit. And I think that’s what it’s about.”
M.I.A. will perform at Harvest Rock Festival in Adelaide on October 25th, with headline shows at Melbourne’s Forum on October 26th and Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on October 29th. Tickets are available via Secret Sounds.
