Fun Fun Fun Fest: M.I.A
If there is an artist that knows how to test out a festival’s audio equipment, it is M.I.A.
It was the end of Fun Fun Fun Fest’s second day, and even after a whole day of excellent live music, the Orange Stage became filled with energetic people who were in for an explosive closer set by Maya Arulpragasam herself.
The stage was set with enormous snowflake-shaped gears that had various lights attached to them. A testing of these lights abruptly burst towards the crowds and everyone had a feeling of what was to be expected from this show. We all knew that we were going to walk out of Auditorium Shores blown away.
And blown away we were. After a few minutes of the sounds of a helicopter bursting through the Orange Stage speakers, M.I.A came out front and center and demanded the crowd to go into a rave-infused frenzy through her music. The first few songs on the set list were blazing out the massive subwoofers and the crowd loved every minute of it. M.I.A. was blowing through her heavy set list with classic hits such as “Bamboo Banga” and “Galang” and the new bangers off her latest LP “Matangi.”
The intensity of M.I.A.’s set proved to be too much for the audio crew, however, as some of the songs were so bass-heavy that the mixing of Maya’s vocals were disappearing into the music, thus making her inaudible at times. At one point, the entire audio was muted. Regardless of the apparent Orange Stage issues with the sounds, M.I.A. managed to keep up with her show and the crowd never showed disappointment.
M.I.A.’s biggest hits were saved for the end of the show and surely there was not one member of the audience who was standing still. The entire festival soon became one giant dance party once Maya brought out some fans to dance to “Boyz.” On top of that, people on stage suddenly threw packets of paint dust that added a vibrant color scheme to the already crazy crowd. “Paper Planes” and “Bad Girls” were the key to the fantastic closer of the show and Fun Fun Fun Fest really did a great job of getting one of the current best pop artists to headline.
