Clandestino in Search of Manu Chao
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CLANDESTINO IN SEARCH OF MANU CHAO ‘Correr es mi destino’ Manu Chao, “Clandestino” To Dad and Michelle and kudos to Andy Morgan PUBLISHING DETAILS Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao © 2013 by Peter Culshaw First published in 2013 by Serpent’s Tail, 3A Exmouth House Pine Street, Exmouth Market London, EC1R OJH www.serpentstail.com 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the UK by Clays, Bungay, Suffolk. Typeset in Lino Letter and Sun Light to a design by Henry Iles. The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. 352pp A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1846681950 The paper this book is printed on is certified by the © FSC logo to be 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C. (FSC). It is ancient- dropped forest friendly. The printer holds FSC chain of custody in here SGS-COC-2061 Contents Intro: Casa Babylon . 7 Part One / La Vida Tómbola – The lives of Manu . 13 1: A Double Life .......................................................... 15 2: The Rock’n’Roll Flame ............................................... 32 3: Hot Pants .............................................................. 43 4: The Rise of the Black Hand .......................................... 66 5: Going South . 82 6: The Fall of the Black Hand .......................................... 96 7: Próxima Estación – Violencia ..................................... 122 8: The Loco Mosquito ................................................. 140 9: Clandestino ......................................................... 164 10: Dakar, Barca ... Insh’allah ........................................ 177 11: Shot by Both Sides ................................................ 192 Part Two / Otros Mundos – In Search of Manu ......... 215 12: Barcelona – The Neighbourhood Guy .......................... 217 13: New York – Into the Heart of the Beast ....................... 227 14: Buenos Aires – Tangos and Delirium ........................... 243 15: Sahara Libre! Dakhla, Algeria ................................... 258 16: Mexico – Machetes, Mariachi, Meths ......................... 270 17: Paris–Siberia ....................................................... 285 18: Brixton Babylon ................................................... 302 19: Brazil – An Encounter with the Goddess ....................... 314 Outro: Finisterre .................................................. 323 Discography ............................................................ 326 Bibliography ............................................................ 334 Photo credits ........................................................... 336 Acknowledgements ................................................... 337 Index .................................................................... 338 Intro: CASA BABYLon ‘When they look for me I’m not there, When they find me I’m elsewhere’ From ‘Desaparecido’ he Casa Babylon in Córdoba could actually be the perfect venue to catch Manu Chao. I’ve come here with the band, on a twelve-hour bus ride across the pampas from Buenos Aires to a boliche – a Tclub that has a cartoonish ambience somewhere between a large village hall and a bar from the Wild West, complete with buxom bar-girls and security guys frisking for guns. The sun’s going down but it’s still over 100 degrees and sweat is pouring from the crowd. ‘¡Que Calor!’ is the first thing any- one says to you. Manu is performing with a street band called Roots Radio, whom he first played with three days ago in Buenos Aires. ‘I like the challenge of putting a new band together fast,’ he says in the tiny furnace of a dressing room. Roots Radio’s members include a percussionist called Kichi, who Manu met busking in Barcelona. Kichi was an economic refugee from the Argentine economic collapse of 2001 but he has now returned to his homeland and is living in the barrio of San Telmo. The show has only been announced earlier in the day, but it’s rammed with a thousand or more fans. It’s so hot IN SEARCH OF MANU CHAO that the guitars drift out of tune mid-number. Manu shouts, ‘Apocalyptic!’ The music whirs again and one of the bar-girls with particularly vertiginous curves and a low-cut T-shirt dances on the bar, rivalling the action onstage. Everyone knows the words to the old numbers like “Clan- destino” and “Welcome To Tijuana”. What’s surprising is that everyone knows the newer numbers, too. Manu’s latest al- bum La Radiolina is only just out, but the audience sing along to “Me Llaman Calle”, about the prostitutes in Madrid who’ll rent out their bodies even if their hearts aren’t for sale, and “La Vida Tómbola”, a song about the damaged Argentine demigod Diego Maradona. Manu is properly famous in Argentina. He can’t walk a block without being stopped, although he says his fame is nothing compared to Maradona. But even in the case of Manu, who could have filled a stadium tonight, there’s a cer- tain craziness in the way people react when they meet him. Manu’s last-minute, improvised gigs, like this benefit, are one way to keep things scaled down and real. ‘It’s normal when you are … ’ Manu tries to explain, struggling for the word, ‘ ... famous … You’re maybe too much like a god, or maybe too much like an asshole.’ Here in Córdoba, as far as the lottery of life is concerned – the ‘tombola’ of Manu’s song – many of the local kids seem to have drawn the short straw, born and raised in tough neighbourhoods, the villa miserias or shanty towns where there are few jobs and little welfare. But plenty of them get in free tonight thanks to La Luciérnaga (‘The Firefly’), a street kids’ charity. The rest of the audience pay 15 pesos (about $5) with all the proceeds of the concert going to La Luciérnaga. Many of the crowd are hard-core Manuistas. Even the name of the club, Casa Babylon, is derived from the title of Manu’s last album with Mano Negra, his previous band, who became legendary in these parts after a TV host asked them the meaning of anarchy and they proceeded to trash the stu- dio, live on air. Mano Negra’s logo of a black hand over a red star is tattooed on a few shoulders and arms. I make a new 8 INTRO: CASA BABYLON friend of a huge security guy, nearly seven feet tall and built like a walk-in fridge. He’s covered in tattoos and introduces a sweet, delicate, petite girl as his novia. The audience are ecstatic that their hero has beamed down for a night. The moment Manu steps out to face the audience, the reaction is so intense it’s like standing next to a jet as it’s taking off. Later, when local street rapper Negro Chetto (‘Black Snob’) leaps onstage and improvises over a Manu track, the place goes delirious. We’d met Negro Chetto earlier, over lunch at the headquar- ters of La Luciérnaga. The association was set-up by a man called Oscar Arias, who explains that when he started his project, around sixty percent of the under-20s in Córdoba were living in poverty, many of them selling things like can- dies and flowers in the street, washing car windows at traf- fic lights, or drifting in and out of crime or prostitution. The organisation is funded like the UK’s Big Issue, from sales of a magazine, so Manu gives it an interview, ignoring all the oth- er local media requests. Why help La Luciérnaga rather than anyone else? ‘I don’t really choose the projects, they choose me,’ Manu answers. ‘We met them touring in 2000 and the idea of the newspaper was good. You look into someone like Oscar’s eyes and you think you can trust him. Sometimes you are wrong. But now we have a strong relation.’ Negro Chetto was a squeegee merchant at traffic lights for years before coming into contact with Oscar and his organi- sation. At the time they were setting up a company called Luci Vid, who now have contracts to wash windows at places like Córdoba’s business park. As well as holding down a job, Negro Chetto has been recording an album. He doesn’t have enough money to press up any CDs, but Pocho, Manu’s re- cord company guy in Argentina, says he’ll try and sort some- thing out for him. ‘Music and Jesus saved me,’ sighs Chetto, crossing himself. Tonight at Casa Babylon, everything is chaotic, last-minute and under the mainstream media radar. ‘We raised some money, but the best thing was the energy,’ Manu says after the show, sopping with sweat and elation. ‘Regenerating 9 IN SEARCH OF MANU CHAO energy! The kids went back out of there with strong energy – and so did I.’ He mentions the guy who was following us on his motorbike from La Luciérnaga earlier. ‘That was Pedro; he was a street kid in 2000, now he’s a father.’ I sleep like a baby on the tour bus that night, full of music and alcohol, and wake up to find that we’re already half way back to Buenos Aires. ‘The bus rocks you like your mother,’ Manu says. A metal cup with straw full of the pungent local herb tea known as maté is being passed around, as the white light of the sun bleaches the landscape and the bus speeds along the flat plains. What happened in Córdoba was a Manu Chao moment; an unscripted happening, a spontaneous fiesta that somehow managed to change someone’s life. It was 2007 and I’d met Manu a few times before, starting with an interview on the release of his second solo album Próxima Estación: Esperanza in 2001. But some time after that trip to Córdoba I resolved to find out more about him, to attempt to answer the question ‘Who the hell was this guy?’ ... to write this book.