After 20 years of absence, his new album is released Long Live YouManu Chao is today one of the most listened to French artists in the world, from the beaches of Goa to the bars of Mexico and on Tik Tok trends. Anti-globalization figurehead, committed artist, true author of Rousseau-style collages, popularizer of “Latino” culture, artisan traveler for some, he also annoys many others, for whom he is the symbol of the triumph of the mainstream over alternative culture. An alternative culture which includes Mano de Negra, Hot Pants and Los Carayos, youth groups of Manu Chao of which he was one of the emblems. From now on, he is also considered as the bearer of a music that is certainly popular, but which has lost all identity through hybridization.
For us, Manu Chao is above all an aggregator, a musician subject to a whole series of influences and always quick to seek new ones, who knew how to invent a sound that is immediately recognizable and above all assimilated by almost everyone. Celebration or appropriation, the question remains: Manu Chao never stops poking, taking or celebrating sounds that he has heard during his countless travels.
Hollow portrait of Manu Chao without listening to Manu Chao, to let you hear everything he is dependent on, or everything he managed to celebrate.
“Viva tu”, Spain, Cuba and flamenco
In line with what he offered us with his albums Clandestine (1998) et Next Station (2001), two huge successes, with Long Live YouManu Chao loses none of his style. It nevertheless offers a more mature sound and a clearer voice, and is now placed in the genre of flamenco.
Of Spanish origin, Manu Chao obviously grew up at a time when a duo of singers and guitarists were revolutionizing flamenco: namely, Camarón de la Isla and Paco de Lucía. But it is the figure of his father, without doubt, who will play the most in the intellectual and musical training of Manu Chao. Spanish journalist and writer born under Francoism in Vilalba, Galicia, passed through Cuba and died in 2018, Ramón Chao is also a great piano virtuoso and the author of more than fifteen books on music. In particular, he has written extensively about Latin American musicians who, in the 1960s, arrived en masse in France to flee dictatorships. Manu Chao’s culture is therefore both Spanish, Galician – Ramón Chao hosts shows in Galician, a language banned in Franco’s Spain – and Cuban.
The Clash and the discovery of rock
After his birth, the young Manu Chao settled with his parents in the suburbs of Boulogne-Billancourt. We speak Spanish at home, and he plays football near the Renault factory with the children of workers who are of Portuguese, Armenian or Latin American origin.
Above all, it was the great discovery, in the mid-1970s, of American rock which had a lasting influence on Manu Chao, his brother Antoine, known as Toni at the time, and their cousin Santiago, known as Santi, who would later become a member of the music majors. The three boys are thus fascinated by figures and groups like The Clash, which pushes them to try to set up their own Anglo-Spanish rock band. The Chao brothers and cousin Santi notably form the Hot Pants, which begins to evolve, to make its own songs, and to integrate into this map of small alternative groups which live in a deliberately libertarian and therefore not very important economy. They evolved and formed at the same time as groups like Pigalle or Les Garçons Bouchers, all of which were formed around the figure of François Hadji-Lazaro. All these beautiful people evolve in the Paris of the 1980s, with a whole series of small outbreaks which defend this alternative culture.
From this period, Manu Chao maintains the principle of all-out collaboration, most of these groups mixing to form more or less lasting or ephemeral collaborations. In each new group, it seems that Manu Chao finds matrices that he subsequently reuses throughout his life. By the example of So many nitessung in Hot Pants style and found later in the albumClandestino, with the song Merry Blues.
Punk, the Stray Cats, Chihuahua and Los Carayos
The big influence of the 1980s is obviously punk, with groups like the Stray Cats, which their small French version, Les Chihuahuas, try to imitate, in which Antoine, Manu Chao’s brother, plays. In addition, crossovers at that time were very frequent, and Manu Chao was not the first to want to combine a very rock energy with cultures linked to Spanish or South American immigration.
It was from all these small groups that a form of super-group was founded in 1985, Los Carayos, which brought together a good number of the “leaders” of all these formations. We find there Manu Chao, leader of Hot Pants, but also the famous François Hadji-Lazaro, Schultz of Parabellum and Alain Wampas, of Wampas, later authors of the title If I had Manu Chao’s wallet. And for good reason, the group separated in the 1990s around these famous questions of strategy, money and what it is appropriate to be and remain when you are a committed musician.
In all cases, Los Carayos benefits from the contribution of instruments that are not traditional rock instruments, notably the banjo or the accordion. A form of craftsmanship that Manu Chao takes up in his ability to play with sounds that often have little connection with traditional instruments.
Black Hand
A true space for experimentation, Los Carayos undoubtedly pushed the three boys, Manu, his brother Antoine and cousin Santiago Casariego, to found their own ensemble, La Mano Negra, in 1987. The group was inspired by the name of an organization South American mafia woman herself inspired by the famous Andalusian terrorist organization of the 19th century, La Mano Negra. La Mano Negra releases a new version of bad lifethis song they had found when they were just starting Hot Pants four years earlier. This new version is a real success in France.
After the immense success of the bad lifethe Mano Negra group made a choice condemned by some of their comrades: leave independent production and go to Virgine. They will defend themselves by saying they wanted to challenge the multinational record companies by entering into them. In any case, Mano Negra really initiated this great so-called “Latin” alternative rock movement, at least in Europe. It became a major group on the rock scene as far as South America, since it embarked on a major cargo tour with in particular the Nantes artists of Royal Deluxe and notably passed through Colombia in 1994.
Of all these influences, Manu Chao retains this ability to make small mixtures in a solo career which is not really one. Indeed, between the end of Mano Negra in 1994 and Clandestinehis first solo album in 1998, he continues to travel, but also to collaborate with a whole series of artists to whom he brings things which he then reuses in his own solo work. As evidenced by his collaboration with the great Kabyle singer Idir, with whom he goes out A tulawin (An Algerian woman standing)whose themes he will take up later in Denia (Next station) in 2001. A form of artisanal collage which has remained his trademark.
Sound clips:
- Manu Chao, Long Live You album Long Live You2024
- Shrimp from the Island and Paco de Lucía, When they see you the flowers cry (Bulerías)album When the flowers see you they cry1969
- Snowball, Oh Mama Inés2016
- Archive: Manu Chao on the rock spirit, There, if I am there, France Inter, 1990
- Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco, Quimbaraalbum Celia & Johnny1974
- The Clash, I Fought the Law (live December 1978)
- Hot Pants, Blue Jeans Talkalbum Los Carayos, Chihuahua (2), Hot Pants – Hot Chicas + Persist and Sign1990
- Archive: François Hadji-Lazaro defines “alternating current”, Everyone to the shelters!France Inter, 1996
- Hot Pants, So many nites1985
- Manu Chao, Merry Bluesalbum Next Station: Hope2001
- Stray Cats, Runaway Boysalbum Runaway Boys1981
- Chihuahua, Napocalypsoalbum Nomad Land…1990
- Archive: Schultz and François Hadji-Lazaro on the creation of Los Carayos, CodaFrance Culture, 1988
- Los Carayos, Oh go, album Los Carayos2002
- Los Carayos, Juanita and Paquitaalbum At the price of the squash… 1990
- Archive: François Hadji-Lazaro on the globalization of rock, François Hadji-Lazaro at the Printemps de BourgesFrance Inter, 1991
- Black Hand, bad lifealbum Patchanka1988
- Archive: Tonio Chao and Jo on the influences of Mano Negra, OpusFrance Culture, 1990
- Cheb Mimoun El Oujdi, Ana nebghikalbum The Moroccan side of raï1995
- Black Hand, Sidi ‘h’ Bibialbum Puta’s Fever1989
- Archive: Manu Chao on money management in the Mano Negra group, There, if I am thereFrance inter, 1990
- Idir et Manu Chao, A tulawin (An Algerian woman standing)album Clandestine1998
- Manu Chao, Denia (Next station)album Next Station: Hope2001
- Paranoia, Buen Rollito (Welcome to Tijuana), The Power of Machín1997
- Manu Chao, Welcome To Tijuanaalbum Clandestine1998
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