Meltdown, the festival curated by a different musical figure each year, often brings unexpected artists to the highbrow Royal Festival Hall. John Peel booked avant-garde proto-punks Suicide; James Lavelle chose black music pioneers Grandmaster Flash and Neneh Cherry.
But while the acts have been varied, the audience has tended to be thirtysomething music-magazine readers who probably have a Tate card. Not so this year with MIA, the Sri Lankan-born MC and political provocateur, taking the helm. Having spent a career championing outlaw and underrepresented musicians, her Meltdown has been a triumph with a diverse, young crowd watching the likes of French afro-trap star MHD and queer-rap pioneer Mykki Blanco. British rapper Giggs, who has had scores of shows cancelled by the police, considered too dangerous to perform, must have felt a sense of vindication when he turned the home of the London Philharmonic Orchestra into a grime rave.
On this, the final night, she took to the stage herself, and the atmosphere was of a closing party rather than a gig. Performing in front, behind and occasionally on top of a giant set of prison bars, the show encompassed MIA’s decade of agit-pop, with images of unrest and incarceration flashing behind her. She seemed in a celebratory mood, letting a makeshift moshpit of superfans take on the lion’s share of vocal duties.
Moments that would have been par for the course in a rock venue felt radical in this space. During Bucky Done Gun, her two dancers, dressed in sportswear versions of orange jumpsuits, spasmed with energy. In Bad Girls, she encouraged a mob of female fans to rush the stage, twirling in between them.
The celebratory atmosphere meant there was little politicking between songs, but ahead of Pull Up the People, she shouted, “Poor people gonna get justice after what happened in London this week”, to cheers of approval.
The highlight was a performance of Bird Song with the women of the Roundhouse Choir. On record, this is one of her cheesiest tracks (sample lyrics: “I’m robin this joint”, “toucan fly together”) but with these young women forming an audible swarm of bird tweets it became viscous and vital.
Meltdown was the perfect festival for MIA. She has always tended to be a better curator than performer; her albums are patchworks of samples and motifs ripped from the global south. This show on its own was not exactly essential (it’s been a year since her last album came out, a record she’s said will be her last) but taken as the close of a festival where politics, outsider street culture and the world of high art met, it was a significant coming together.
