STORY MARIO OñA | phOTOS jASOn gARdneR

in a room back-

stage at Philly’s Electric Factory club (and saving

my legs for the two-hour bouncefest that will

soon ensue), I look through the door onto a hall-

way and catch an impatient and terribly nervous

Manu Chao, who’s pacing, kicking, trotting, hop-

ping and stretching like a soccer player or boxer

psyching himself up before the main event. Now

a few dates into his latest tour of North America

with his radioactive Radio Bemba Sound System

band, he’s only a holler away, but at the moment,

it seems as though we might as well be oceans

apart.

Although I’d interviewed him by phone a week

earlier, the journalist in me wanted to see how

the “in-the-flesh” Chao stacked up against the

almost mythological “people’s Chao”—the world-

traveling musician known for going into remote

villages in Africa and Latin America to jam with

the locals. The music lover in me worried that

one glimpse of an uptight rock star persona

might totally dispel the image of the altruistic

music man.

The next time past the door, he sneaks a

nervous wave. As he’s almost out of sight, he

backpedals into the room, walks up to me—a

complete unknown—extends his hand and says,

“Hi, I’m Manu.”

Sitting on a dingy couch

42 GLOBAL RHYTHM nOveMbeR/deceMbeR_07

To understand how the term “legendary”

usually accompanies Chao’s name, it’s

important to start at the very begin-

ning. Born June 21, 1961 in Paris,

José-Manuel Thomas Arthur Chao

is the son of Spanish immigrants.

His Galician father, Ramón

Chao, a pianist and prominent

journalist from Vilalba, Spain,

moved to France on a scholar-

ship. His mother, Felisa, an

engineer from Bilbao in the

Basque Country, fled to Paris

during Francisco Franco’s

fascist reign.

“My mother’s youth was very

complicated due to the civil war

in Spain,” Chao explained over

the phone a week earlier while

sitting on the steps of Detroit’s

St. Andrews Hall before his

show there. “My grandfather was

condemned to death in Spain and

had to flee the country.” This par-

tially explains Chao’s general distrust for

governments and his nonchalant stance

towards “flags” and “borders,” not to men-

tion his self-proclaimed status as a “citizen

of the time.”

With an Ernesto “Che” Guevara photo

adorning his childhood home in the outskirts

of Paris—first in the industrial town of

Boulogne-Billancourt and then Pont de

Sévres on the Seine River—Chao grew

up with an affinity for all things

Cuban. In 2006, he was the

first French solo artist

to perform in

Cuba in

nOveMbeR/deceMbeR_07 GLOBAL RHYTHM 43

nearly 40 years, though technically he

had performed years earlier with his band

Mano Negra. Around the time of Chao’s

visit, the Cuban communist party newspa-

per, Granma, which also prints in French,

reported that Alejo Carpentier—a famous

Cuban novelist and subject of one Ramón

Chao’s books—had sent the young Manu

a pair of maracas when he was a child.

Cuba also gave Chao his first taste of

music. “When I was four or five, the stuff

my old man played around the house was

the first music I remember loving,” he

recalls fondly. “The Cuban singer Bola de

Nieve was my revelation to music and we

still listen and sing his songs to this day.”

“Once I grew up a little, I went into my

neighborhood, which was very rock ‘n’

roll and rockabilly, and took to the great

adventure of the streets,” he continues.

“It was impossible to play anything else

or you’d get beat up. The big one for me

was Chuck Berry—without a doubt. Later,

punk arrived, despite the malandros

[hoodlums] of the neighborhood not ac-

cepting it. Eventually, we brought in the

Clash, Stiff Little Fingers and the Ra-

mones, and we started forming bands.”

Chao “left everything to go and make

music” when he was about 17. He says he

was “blessed with a very unified family,”

but admits that his mother was “terrified”

at first. The reggae-loving Chao, who re-

cently told Filter magazine that he consid-

ers Bob Marley his “professor of simplici-

ty” for making “unique, but simple songs,”

says, “I don’t regret not finishing school

one bit. I knew it could always come back

and haunt me, but in time music gave me

the opportunity to travel, and traveling is

the best university.”

For the most part, he’s been on the road

ever since. After fronting a short-lived

rockabilly fusion band called Hot Pants

with his cousin Santiago Casariego, and

a bluesier, folksier ensemble named Los

Carayos (loosely meaning “the penises”

in misspelled Galician or “the damn-its”

in misspelled Spanish) with his brother

Antoine Chao, the three came together in

1987 to form Mano Negra—France’s an-

swer to the Clash, had the Clash sung in

Spanish, French, English and Arabic and

sprinkled rai, flamenco and Latin poly-

rhythms over their punk-reggae cauldron.

Taking their name from a 19th-century

secret Andalucian anarchist group, Mano

Negra constantly toured behind four

genre-defying studio albums—Patchanka

(1988), Puta’s Fever (1989), King Of The Bongo (1991) and Casa Babylon

(1994). With classic songs like “Mala Vida,” “Sidi H’Bibi” and “King Of The

Bongo” in their repertoire, they took their carnivalesque, world-fusion punk

shows wherever they pleased. In 1989, they toured the U.S. as no-names open-

ing for Iggy Pop. They also played the South By Southwest music festival—a

performance still trumpeted today as a defining moment in the Austin-based

confab’s history. A few years later, they toured Latin American ports by ship

and traveled throughout Colombia by train, bringing guerilla fighters, drug-

traffickers and farmers to a standstill during their shows. Chao’s father later

documented that journey in a book entitled Un Train de Glace et de Feu (A

Train of Ice and Fire).

Although Mano Negra is widely lauded as one of the most innovative and in-

fluential bands in Latin alternative music—not to mention the band that paved

the way for multinational, multilingual fusion punk bands like Gogol Bordel-

lo—Chao really didn’t reach his full potential as a singer-songwriter-guitarist-

producer until he went solo. (Incidentally, Gogol Bordello, who list Manu Chao

first as an influence on their Myspace page, covered Mano Negra’s “Mala Vida”

on their 2005 East Infection EP.)

After the breakup of Mano Negra in 1994, Chao—now based in Barcelona—

began traveling incessantly. His journeys throughout Brazil, Senegal, Mexico,

Colombia, Spain, France and many other countries with a handheld tape

recorder resulted, rather unexpectedly, in two monumental albums—1998’s

Clandestino: Esperando La Ultima Ola and 2001’s Proxima Estación: Esperanza.

These travels also defined anew his recording approach, which he still follows

today. In order to keep things “fresh,” Chao says he records at “the instant of

inspiration.”

During a CNN interview several years ago, the French troubadour revealed

that “Clandestino came as a big surprise. I thought my mom and a few friends

might buy it, but I was not expecting that.” And by “that,” he means the

biggest-selling record in French music history, with over 2.5 million units sold

to date and another 2.5 million worldwide.

Alhough they were recorded nearly three years apart, Clandestino and

Proxima Estación essentially function as one cohesive unit that demands to be

listened from start to finish, without interruption—think of it as Chao’s up-

dated version of Pink Floyd’s dark epic The Wall. But while Pink Floyd sought

to symbolically break down the insidious Iron Curtain and post-WWII society,

Chao aimed to hurdle the xenophobic fences of anti-immigrant sentiment.

Starting with the anthemic title track off Clandestino and ending with the

bittersweet “Infinita Tristeza”—meaning “infinite sadness”—off the ironically

titled Proxima Estación: Esperanza (Next Stop: Hope), both albums delicately

transition from one song to the next, and from one language to another, with

magnificent seamlessness. Proxima Estación might be the slightly brassier and

more upbeat album, but the differences are almost negligible. Both albums

feature spicy, start-stop acoustic guitars, radio broadcast samples, video-game

bleeps and unpredictable turns that end up in old school salsa, swaggering

reggae, drunken ska, bouncy rai or even rootsy, Andean folkloric music—all

the while sounding harmonious, organic and unforced.

I don’t regret not finishing school one bit. I knew it could always come back and haunt me, but in time music gave me the opportunity to travel, and traveling is the best university.

44 GLOBAL RHYTHM nOveMbeR/deceMbeR_07

While sonically the music is as unrestrained by borders as

its creator, both albums are fiercely held together by themes

of despair, persecution, insomnia, love, longing, leaving, and

finally, a pinch of hope. It’s clear that the globe-trotting Chao

wants the world to vicariously live the life of the immigrant

through his songs.

When discussing immigration, Chao points out that “no-

body migrates out of free will. Most of the immigrants I’ve

come across would prefer to live in their own countries and

have dignified employment there and be able to educate their

children there.” Chao is passionate about many things, but it’s

the plight of the immigrant that he wears on his sleeve.

“The profound solution to the immigration problem is that

the first world stop exploiting and ‘vampirizing’ the third

world people,” he continues. “I don’t think the problem can be

resolved by building walls. Those countries need to allow these

poor countries to develop on their own and for that to be pos-

sible, the first world countries need to accept a more modest

way of life. But who’s willing to accept that?”

Understandably, he has no shortage of critics. Even a fan

on his manuchao.net forum accused Chao of being a hypocrite

for pandering to the U.S. so that he could afford his “Puma

sneakers” and “Gibson guitars.” French psychobilly rockers

Les Wampas, who scored their biggest hit “Manu Chao” in

2003, sang: “If I had Manu Chao’s wallet, I'd go on holidays

at least to the Congo.” Front man Didier Wampas took aim

at Chao and other artists who seemingly criticize the same system

that’s made them rich. But with a history of band members cross-

pollinating between Wampas and Mano Negra, it’s unclear if the po-

lemic was merely a case of bad blood, jealousy or a publicity stunt.

Chao’s U.S. tour is his most ambitious since Mano Negra’s in

1989. He’s traveling solely by bus, and has stopped at U.S. festivals

like Coachella, Bonnaroo and Sasquatch! I ask him if his intent is

to broaden his fan base in the U.S. “That’s not how I roll at all,” he

says sharply, slightly agitated and a bit on the defensive. “Whether

my albums sell well in the U.S., is not a fundamental priority—I

don’t need the money. But through the Internet, we realized that a

lot of our U.S. fans hadn’t seen us in years. I also want to under-

stand this country better for myself, because it’s evident that be-

cause of the U.S. government, there’s a very critical view of the U.S.

in neighborhoods all over the world.”

Chao has been more than vocal about his contempt for President

Bush—whom he’s called the “world’s greatest terrorist”—and general

U.S. ambivalence. But on the phone, he seems encouraged by the

way he and his five-piece Radio Bemba Sound System have been

received, particularly at the festivals where it’s “much more anglo”

and they “don’t even know who we are.” It doesn’t hurt that their

high-energy live shows, which feature Mano Negra songs mixed

with punked-out versions of Chao’s mellower solo material, have

garnered rave reviews. “When we were in Portland,” he says, “we

jammed with Russians, and in San Francisco with Iranians. That’s

what’s cool about the U.S. You find people from all over the world

here.”

The world has changed enormously since Chao tracked his last

studio album. September 11 had just happened. Bush and Cheney

were re-elected. London and Madrid were bombed. Lebanon was

invaded. Terrorism and anti-American sentiment proliferated. Chao

kept his voice in the fray by releasing the live album Radio Bemba

Sound System and the DVD Babylonia en Guagua in 2002, and then

producing Malian couple Amadou and Mariam’s breakout Diman-

che Á Bamako, as well as his own limited French-only release—the

all-acoustic Sibérie M'était Contéee—in 2004. But his outstanding

new album La Radiolina (Because/Nacional) is the one he hopes will

declare a global state of emergency.

Chao says that like Clandestino and Proxima Estación, the new

album was “recorded here and there—nowhere defined,” and that he

was never thinking that the songs would appear on his next album.

“The only difference on how I made the new album,” he explains, “is

that more people from the group play on it. Madjid [Fahem], the gui-

tarist, and David [Bourgnion], the drummer, stopped by and I think

you can tell.” Up until now, Radio Bemba (named after a word-of-

mouth network for relaying news during the Cuban revolution—still

in practice today) was simply his touring band.

On the new album, as in the previous two, 14 of the 21 tracks are

under three minutes and have “no silence between them.” But while

Proxima Estacíon was “Clandestino’s little sister,” as Chao dubbed it,

La Radiolina is a distant cousin: the bloodline’s there, but the differ-

ences are stark.

While it’s true that Fahem’s hard-driving electric guitar with

tangential shredding and Bourgnion’s propulsive drumming add

edge, angst and a punk rawness reminiscent of Mano Negra, it’s La

Radiolina’s urgency that most clearly defines it. From the twangy,

country-fried opener “13 Dias”—where Chao desperately and repeat-

edly asks, “And now what? What we gonna do?”—to the pneumatic

Manu ChaoeSSentIal lIStenIng

Mano negraPuta’s FeverVirgin Records, 1989

Manu ChaoClandestino: esperando La ultima ola Ark 21, 1998

Manu ChaoProxima estación: esperanza Virgin Record, 2001

Manu ChaoBabylonia en guagua DVD Radio Bemba, 2002

aMaDou anD MariaM (produced by Manu Chao)Dimanche Á Bamako Because/Nonesuch, 2004

Manu ChaoLa radiolina: Y ahora Qué? Because/Nacional, 2007

SMoD (produced by Manu Chao)The as-yet-untitled and unreleased album by Sam Bagayoko, son of Amadou and Mariam, promises to be an

interesting hybrid. Chao himself describes it as “hip-hop folk from Mali.”

jackhammer rhythms found on “Besoin de la Lune,” “El Kitapena,” “The Bleedin Clown”

and the superb brassy ska number “El Hoyo,” it’s obvious that merely raising conscious-

ness is not enough. Plain and simple, this is Chao’s “Get Up, Stand Up” plea.

“[The first single] ‘Rainin in Paradize’ is a glimpse of where the world is right now—

very political, quote, unquote,” he says. With sirens blaring and Chao declaring over and

over, “Today it’s raining!” he then sings about the “atrocity” in Zaire and Monrovia, the

“calamity” in Fallujah and the Congo, and the “hypocrisy” in Palestine, before rallying

behind the nomadic, pastoral Masai tribe of Tanzania and Kenya during the chorus: “Go

Masai! Go Masai!” His aim at U.S. foreign policy is also more direct: “In Baghdad, it’s no

democracy/That’s just because it’s a U.S. country.” The ominious “Politik Kills” is about

the “violence that stems from politics,” as Chao explains. Maybe not coincidentally, the

songs with the strongest political statements are sung in English.

Sonically, it’s not all teeth-grinding stuff. There may not be two more beautifully-craft-

ed, melodic, and melancholic songs all year than the bouncy, Spanish-sung “Tristeza

Maleza” or the flamenco lament “Me Llaman Calle.” But perhaps the most gorgeous mu-

sical moment comes during the Italian-sung gem “A Cosa,” where past Chao collaborator

Tonino Carotone’s raspy baritone backs up Chao’s higher-pitched croon, and a precisely

timed, punctuating trombone and fat trumpet blasts add texture to the gentle, reggae-

meets-Italian folk song.

“There are also songs about love, unlove, anger—and one about rumors and people

who talk to talk,” says Chao, his words perhaps a gentle and subtle response to the

gauntlet thrown down by Les Wampas. The Spanish guitar-laden “La Vida Tombola”

is the second homage he’s paid to friend and soccer legend Diego Armando Maradona

(Mano Negra’s “Santa Maradona” being the first), after director Emir Kusturica asked

Chao to contribute a song to Kusturica’s upcoming documentary about the fallen-from-

grace Argentinean legend. Incidentally, Kusturica also directed one of the two videos for

the “Rainin in Paradize” single, which shows Chao driving a bus through Buenos Aires,

accompanied by people who work at La Colifata—a mental health patient-run radio sta-

tion in the city. The other video is a colorful animation piece done by Polish cartoonist

and longtime collaborator Jacek Wozniak.

Although by design the album flows like “a radiolina or little radio station,” it’s more

jagged than the previous two. Lyrically, however, the new album is quintessential Chao.

While most songs are straightforward, a few songs like “Mama Cuchara” revisit the

impressionist tradition that Chao has borrowed from Monet or Renoir in the past, where

like a painter, he stipples words designed to conjure a sentiment or feeling rather than

convey a direct thought.

“Mama Cuchara ayudame/esta lloviendo y yo tengo frio (mother spoon help me/

it’s raining and I’m cold,” the song goes, “Mama Cuchara abrigame/hazme cobija de tu

pared” (mother spoon warm me up/make me a blanket with your wall).” Without know-

ing that Mama Cuchara is a cozy, colonial cul-de-sac in Quito, Ecuador’s historic district

and that people there take shelter from the frigid Andean rain by standing against walls,

the seemingly nonsensical song places the listener in Chao’s cold damp sneakers.

Backstage in Philly, those large shoes seem like a very nerve-racking place to be

before a show. After saying hi, Chao quickly perches on an old pool table and with his

stocky, dangling legs trembling, confesses, “I just wanna get out there and get it over

with. In French, it’s called ‘le trac’ [stage fright]—I’m just naturally very timid.” After

introducing myself as the journalist who interviewed him a few days earlier, and being

careful not to rattle him with a tape recorder or note pad, I lob a few softies at him.

I ask him about any special diets or exercise that help sustain the band through their

high-energy shows. “We try to eat healthy without depriving ourselves of drinking a few

beers or smoking marijuana,” Chao quips. “But really, I think the gasoline is the antici-

pation and being afraid.”

After he turns the table on me with questions and I reveal that my family is Ecuador-

ian, Chao enthusiastically tells me that he wrote “Mama Cuchara” in Quito on his birth-

day in 2001 and then begins singing it. He asks me where my parents are from. Before

I can finish answering that my dad’s from Cuenca, he interrupts me: “We’ve been there

a few times! One of my favorite memories is playing in a remote little village outside of

Cuenca.” When I ask him how the gig came about, he smiles and says, “When the people

ask, how can you possibly say no?”