Mano Negra - An indispensable energy

The period between the late Eighties and the early Nineties was probably the last time anyone truly felt that popular music could change the world. After years of pure hedonism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, a raw, unfiltered realism returned, in line with the phenomenology of 1970s punk. While in the States this gave rise to things like grunge and rap-metal, on this side of the ocean the alternative vision coalesced around genres that emerged from rave culture (in the UK) and from pockets of hardcore punk, combat-folk, reggae and dub born out of squats and community centres.
Setting the UK aside for a moment - historically quicker to embrace new movements - the European country that seemed best able to shape its own path of dissent was France, largely due to its colonial past and the social tensions in the outskirts of its big cities. In one of those outskirts (Sèvres, a commune in the Boulogne-Billancourt arrondissement, on the edge of Paris) Mano Negra were born, led by José Manuel Arturo Tomás Chao Ortega, known as Manu - perhaps the one person most capable of turning an entire generation's will to resist, fight and dance into pure performative energy.

Joe Strummer and Mick Jones are among the few rock musicians who have never let me down
(Manu Chao)

The global village

The band formed in 1987 out of a string of musical projects involving, in various capacities, Manu (vocals and guitar), his brother Antoine on trumpet - both sons of Ramon Chao, a Galician musician, writer and journalist who emigrated to France in 1956 to escape Franco's dictatorship, and of Felisa Ortega, a Basque researcher at the CNRS - and their cousin Santiago Casariego on drums. Through mostly busking experiences with Joint De Culasse (1981 - standard 1950s American rock), Les Flappers (1982 - similar, but more punk-oriented), Hot Pants (rhythm'n'blues, punk-rock) and Los Carayos (reworked ethno-rock), the three of them mapped out the core coordinates of the Mano Negra adventure: essentially, the desire to play party music free of the dominance of white Western sounds, taking as its reference point “Sandinista!” by The Clash. The band's broad spectrum of influences is perfectly mirrored in a name chosen specifically to represent its chaotic, street-level nature, variously linked to a supposed late-19th-century Andalusian anarchist group, a band of South American guerrillas, illegal labour, or the black market.

I don't know if it's warriors, a symbol of black magic, the name of a wrestling hero, the name of a Spanish anarchist movement, the New York mafia, a far-right military movement. When you see it on a poster, I like that it stirs up all these images, even at the risk of being misunderstood
(Manu Chao, interview for Belgian TV)

The band's early compositions reveal a strongly Hispanic character, especially in the lyrics, largely stateless and antifascist in spirit (though Manu also writes in French and English). The absence of a single reference genre, however, calls for a different kind of approach. Taking a cue from the Spanish word "pachanga" (used to describe the music of Cuban ballrooms) and the idea of cultural/artistic "patchwork", the term Patchanka was coined, used in November 1988 as the title of their debut album, released on the independent label Boucherie Production.
The record captures the project's strengths quite faithfully, standing out for its ability to venture into rockabilly ("Takin' It Up", "Darling Darling") and rap (the Parisian banlieue was among the first in Europe to feel its influence), with tracks in the vein of Beastie Boys like "Rock Island Line" and "Killin' Rats". But the tracks that point toward what would become the band's true stylistic signature - the blending of Mediterranean and Global South influences - are "Indios de Barcelona", "Mala Vida", "Noche de accion", "Ronde de Nuit": anthems of frenzy and the rough-edged life of outsiders everywhere, regardless of nationality. "Ronde de nuit" in particular is something of a frontal assault on Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris (later President of the Republic), accused by the band of turning the ville lumière into a dormitory ruled by curfews and armed night patrols.
The tracklist closes with the intense voice-and-guitar ballad "Salga La Luna", added to the record last, only after stripping away the rest of the arrangement.
It's an extremely vibrant, at times still raw debut, but a powerful one in conveying a wake-up call to the whole community of people living on the margins of the ordinary-man narrative - a humanity wandering the alleys of an outskirts that exists in the soul long before it does on any map.

Paris se meurt aujourd’hui/ De s’être donnée à un bandit/ Un salaud qui lui a pris/ Ses nuits blanches/ Paris la nuit c’est fini/ Paris va crever d’ennui/ Paris se meurt, rendez-lui/ ses nuits blanches
(Ronde De Nuit)

The show the ensemble brought to the stage (now joined by drummer Philippe Teboul and guitar duo Daniel Jamet/Joseph Dahan, formerly of Casse-Pieds, a brilliant rock/rockabilly improv outfit with whom Manu had struck up a strong friendship) was at once politically engaged and circus-like, pacifist and rebellious, ragged and proud, finding its natural home in live performance, fuelled by constant word of mouth. A party that was never entertainment for its own sake, but a way of answering back to the hardships of everyday life.
The arrival of Thomas Darnal on keyboards and Pierre Gauthé on trombone rounded out a line-up that now numbered eight, requiring a few preliminary adjustments - like asking someone to switch instruments. The clearest cases were Joseph, who moved from guitar to bass, and Philippe, who was asked to switch to percussion (something that almost immediately led him toward new territory, like composing). It was a growth process fuelled by hours of daily sessions, often sleeping in the squat used as a rehearsal space, all in search of the right formula to play - and get along - together.
After their show at the Rencontres Trans Musicales in Rennes in December, everyone was talking about "la Mano Negra" (in the feminine form) as the biggest musical sensation on French soil.

Taming the chaos

The only way for the band to remain artistically independent was to build a network of contacts with other acts, like Kingsnakes, Chihuahua, Happy Drivers, La Souris Déglinguée, Les Satellites, Les Wampas and Bérurier Noir (the former band of Helno of Les Négresses Vertes), but there was too much to juggle, and Boucherie Production struggled to manage it all. The band started looking around, pressed by countless contract offers from major labels and other independents, but remained unsure about which way to go. To narrow down the field, they drew up a written list of demands regarding control over artistic decisions. In the end, Virgin France won out - not for financial reasons (the independents had offered far more money), but because it was the only one willing to guarantee all their conditions. A great result, then, though not enough to silence those who, from that moment on, accused them of selling out - just as had happened to The Clash when they signed to CBS.

We came close to breaking up ten, twenty, a hundred times. Every time someone tried to force a decision on us that we didn't agree with, we'd tell them they could keep their decision, because we were all leaving. At that point, they'd quickly backtrack and let us do things our way
(Manu Chao, interview for French TV)

One of the first outcomes of the deal with Virgin was the start of work on the band's second album, which finally saw a stable line-up and songwriting largely shared among all members, while the lyrics remained Manu's domain (an arrangement also reflected in the split of royalties). Mano Negra's ever-expanding extended family couldn't do without a proper nickname for each member: Antoine became "Tonio del Borño", Daniel "Roger Cageot", Santiago "Santi" or "El Aguila" (thanks to his recognised organisational skills), Thomas "Helmut Krumar", Philippe "Garbancito", Pierre "Kropol", and Joseph simply "Jo". Manu already had a nickname from the very beginning: Oscar Tramor.
Concert promoter Bernard Batzen, who had meanwhile become their manager, noticed that the recording sessions needed a break to let the band's chemistry settle, and suggested they head to South America for half a dozen dates, including Lima, Cuzco, Quito and Guayaquil. The hope was that the trip might also put their everyday worries into perspective against the poverty they'd witness there. Batzen's hunch proved inspired, and can be seen as a turning point. The famous "open veins of Latin America" (to borrow a phrase dear to Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano) provided the ideal stage for Mano Negra's vital brand of spectacle, and the song "Mala Vida" was an idea easy to grasp in places overshadowed by poverty. In Cuzco, Peru (at the time a country in freefall), the band played what was, up to that point, the only show by a foreign act in the city, getting through it with the help of coca leaves to cope with the lack of oxygen at 3,400 metres. A police cordon tried to keep the crowd three metres from the stage, but had little success against the invasion of hordes of wild-eyed kids who couldn't believe their eyes and ears. Philippe fainted and needed an oxygen tank to recover, Santiago lost his breath and couldn't keep up with the backing vocals, half the stage collapsed along with all the amplifiers (the only ones available in the area) - but what the crowd witnessed that night has stayed etched in the city's memory ever since.

The band returned deeply changed by their experience in South America and quickly finished recording their new album, Puta's Fever, a title meant both as a response to those who called them whores for selling out (the phrase refers to syphilis in Puerto Rican slang) and as a direct reference to the heat and feverish intensity of their live shows. The result marks a major step forward in terms of drive, determination and the ability to bring all the ingredients of the recipe organically together - exactly where the first album had partly fallen short, having been recorded while the line-up was still unsettled.
With an opener that reworks the one from their debut, and a run of opening tracks that seem determined not to let the listener breathe until track 7, Mano Negra suddenly become greater than the sum of their parts. For the first time, it's possible to sense a single unifying feeling beneath the differences in language (Arabic is added here, on "Sidi H'Bibi"), the blend of salsa, reggae, ska, the barricade-storming fury of The Clash and Stiff Little Fingers, Shadows-style guitars, Algerian raï, the rap that was emerging in those years (see the international breakout of the first single, "King Kong Five") and the sheer speed of hardcore punk. A dizzying kaleidoscope at times, a sonic Babel that stands as a metaphor both for the complexity of life and for the joy to be found in the world despite the chaos.
Mano Negra were the first to bring a whole world of rhythms and melodies to the ears of listeners raised solely on Anglo-Saxon rock, staging a multicultural Europe that distanced itself from the prevailing sound and, in its own way, anticipated the whole crossover epic of the Nineties. Alongside songs like "The Rebel Spell", "Pas Assez De Toi", "Guayaquil City" and "Peligro", which speak of life in the barrio (or the favelas), of rebel souls, of repression, of the CIA's dirty dealings, there's room for bitter confessions about the price of fame ("La Rançon Du Succès") and outright street-party episodes ("Magic Dice", "Patchanka", "Patchuko Hop"), all following a running-time pattern that, true to classic punk tradition, rarely stretches past three minutes.
In 1989, no one in France could match the intensity and fire of Mano Negra on stage, if only because no one else was starting from the same set of premises. The one exception were their friends Les Négresses Vertes (also children of the Parisian banlieue), authors of the excellent debut "Mlah", whose sound was just as steeped in exoticism but leaned more toward auteur-driven Gypsy folk, sung entirely in French (to use a phrase common at the time, Mano Negra were to The Clash what Les Négresses Vertes were to The Pogues).

Cuidao donde sea/ Que van complotando/ Los de la Cia/ Peligroso esta el barrio de Guatemala/ Peligroso esta el barrio de Nicaragua
(Peligro)

The album's release is followed by a massive tour that also takes in Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, the big European festivals, and pushes as far as London and Tokyo, with the true highlight being the mini-tour of Pigalle's venues, a neighbourhood deemed perfect for the band's identity and for turning the usual accusations of commercial prostitution on their head. Shows at clubs like Erotika, La Cigale, New Moon, Folies Pigalle and Élysée Montmartre sell out, causing long queues outside – sometimes two or three concerts a day are needed to satisfy everyone – and confirm the power of a live show where even the audience climbs on stage to celebrate the great ritual of global sound through stage diving.
Virgin insists on a few US dates supporting an idol like Iggy Pop, but things don't go exactly as planned, both because of the many contradictions encountered in the country and because Iggy inexplicably acts like a star and avoids meeting them, perhaps unable to grasp that strange musical proposition.
The human disappointment, combined with the media saturation from Puta's Fever (half a million copies sold worldwide, three hundred thousand in France alone), leads Mano Negra to decide to stop giving most interviews. Forced to choose between North America and South America, it's clear that from that moment on, the latter would always win out.

The Lure of the Market

The air breathed in the States, the tense international situation, and the first war broadcast live on TV (the one in Iraq) partly dampen the band's revelry and irony, making way for a different awareness, one also fuelled by anger. The first reflection of this can be traced in the new material, which isn't afraid to flirt with electric storms on tracks like "Bring The Fire", "Letter To The Censors" (a clear homage to Motorhead's "Ace Of Spades") and "Welcome In Occident". The idea is to convey to everyone the sense of injustice and urban alienation felt by migrants in the suburbs, turning it into a concept album through the exploits of a hypothetical King of Bongo who, once he arrives in the metropolis, finds himself crushed by all its contradictions.
This is how, in early 1991, Mano Negra's most rock album was born: King Of Bongo, a record sung mostly in English, attempting to sell English-speaking audiences a sound different from what they were used to (an attempt that would fail). Recorded at Conny Plank's studio in Cologne, the record doesn't change its sonic imprint all that much, but makes good use of the technological arsenal present in the studio that had previously hosted legends like Kraftwerk and Neu!. The Link Wray-style guitar of the title track (later turned into a worldwide hit by the solo Manu Chao of the era with "Clandestino") echoes the band's early rock'n'roll influences, while "Don't Want You No More" and "Out Of Time Man" (the latter with a chord progression reminiscent of "The Passenger") are perfect fits for any alternative rock radio station. The album closes with "Paris la nuit", essentially a valse-musette version of "Ronde de nuit" with very subtle lyrical variations.

DON’T ASK ME/ WHERE’S THE PARTY?/ Cause there’s no party for you and me
(Welcome In Occident)

Promoting the album means reckoning with the dawn of real music-industry commercialisation in France, the kind that produces expensive music videos. The band knows it's caught up in dynamics that aren't its own, dictated by the industry, and does everything it can to stay true to itself. It keeps inviting as many people as possible up on stage, always choosing venues in the Parisian suburbs, where rock isn't exactly the first choice for young people (more drawn to rap and rai), at rock-bottom prices. The tour of the banlieues is called Caravane and keeps them busy throughout the month of April.
Turnout is such that, for the first time, they're forced to hire a security detail made up of trusted people. In Italy, specifically in Turin, in July, the band is originally billed as part of the Sere d'Estate festival, with the chance to play in front of thousands at the Stadio Comunale. But a last-minute falling-out with the organisers (for reasons never quite clarified) sees them instead head, to everyone's surprise, to El Paso, one of the city's historic squatted social centres, delivering a blistering set made up of tracks from "King Of Bongo" and covers of Beatles, Stooges, Damned and Ramones songs, leaving the lucky few present stunned (a bootleg of that night, much sought-after among fans, exists – "Mano Negra & Les Patrons, Dal Vivo Al Passo Occupato, Torino"). It's confirmation of a dynamic that's always present within the group, caught between the conventions of record promotion and the urgency of staying true to principles of consistency and solidarity.

On August 9th, Mano Negra becomes a political case back home during a concert at La Défense, where tens of thousands of people are expected. The institutional clash between the mayor of Puteaux, who wants to block the event, and culture minister Jack Lang, who instead proposes simple police monitoring, ends in the latter's favour, but the date will remain the band's last in France, despite King Of Bongo selling 300,000 copies. The subsequent trips to Mexico and Japan have diametrically opposed outcomes. The first is a financial loss but forges a great brotherhood with Mexican bands, while the second is a commercial success too, and becomes the subject of an official live release ("In The Hell Of Patchinko" – a play on words between "patchanka" and Japan's deafening arcades packed with slot machines, "pachinko").

A Cargo Ship and an Ice Train

It is once again Jack Lang, a few months later, who gives government approval to one of the biggest commemorative projects for the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Americas: Cargo 92. On a ship packed with enough supplies to survive independently for four months, a theatre company, a mime troupe, a dance company and Mano Negra all come together, with the goal of promoting French culture in Latin America. The programme includes a hundred shows across eight ports, forty cities and fifteen countries, with almost all the concerts free of charge.
Manu and his bandmates find themselves reliving, in amplified form, the experience of two years earlier: in Caracas the army struggles to contain 120,000 people, fearing an uprising (or at least a demonstration in support of Chavez, recently imprisoned after a coup attempt); in Havana, security is largely unprepared to handle the fury of the pogo and stage diving (something the Cuban papers will make absolutely no mention of the next day); in Rio de Janeiro, Jello Biafra joins them on stage for a memorable version of Dead Kennedys's "Too Drunk To Fuck"; in Cartagena, the band is visited by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (it can happen, when the ship is called "Melquiades"). The Cargo 92 adventure, however, leaves the band facing a series of long-term problems, with Daniel and Antoine close to leaving, perhaps unsettled by Manu's South American infatuation (his Spanish roots likely fuelling a desire to romantically make amends for how the conquistadores of the past had treated that continent). What was supposed to be an opportunity to further cement the line-up – already at work on songs for the new album – instead turns out to be a cause of fracture, both from exhaustion and differing opinions on musical direction. The point is that it's no longer just about tearing down Anglo-Saxon musical dominance. Mano Negra is now the most famous rock band in Latin America, and a different approach is needed.

This is how "El Expreso del Hielo" comes about, a project that picks up on the Cargo's earlier stop in Colombia to highlight the sad irony of a country where the tracks exist but the train never runs. The idea is to restore some train carriages and have them travel the abandoned railway line connecting Santa Marta to Bogotá, stopping in various cities to put on a show featuring music, special effects, circus acts and theatre. Turning twenty-one decommissioned carriages into something like this (complete with an ice-sculpture museum, a carriage set ablaze, a machine capable of making it snow, a tattoo parlour and a fire-breathing iguana) requires finding considerable human and financial resources. The funding comes partly from French associations and partly from Colombian organisations, but sponsorships don't cover all the costs. What's more, the state of public order in rural Colombia in 1993 is extremely difficult. The train passes through places where no one has ever seen a concert in their life and where, almost every time, some kind of negotiation with drug traffickers or insurgent groups is needed in order to give people a moment of carefree joy. A dangerous journey, one every embassy advises against (news of Pablo Escobar's death arrives while the train is travelling from Aracataca to Bosconia).
Despite the difficulties and financial losses, the project is completed in six weeks thanks to the dedication of Colombian railway workers and the perseverance of the expedition's leaders (among them Ramon Chao, Manu's father, author of the wonderful travel diary "La Mano Negra in Colombia"), but in the meantime almost all the band members abandon the convoy and return to Paris. The road leading to the release of Mano Negra's final album (or what's left of the band – specifically just Manu and Thomas) is therefore marked by a pilgrimage through recording studios on both sides of the Atlantic, but it crystallises into an important result.

Casa Babylon arrives in May 1994 and immediately reveals itself to be deeply shaped by everything the band has lived through over the previous two years. It contains the desire to stay united (the barricade-storming declaration of "Viva Zapata") despite the chaos and hardships of life (the breakneck ragamuffin of the title track and of "La Vida Me Da Palo"), the abuses of the local drug lord (the irresistible proto-reggaeton of "Senor Matanza") and prevailing Yankee culture (the metaphor of fields of overfed children in "Hamburger Fields").
But there's also room for generational conflict (the cover of the traditional Cuban song "Mama Perfecta") and the utopian dream of a Latin American federation finally at peace ("Sueno de Solentiname"), both of them thrown off balance by the constant exposure to wars on TV ("Machine Gun") and by the experience of football lived as the one true prevailing religion ("Santa Maradona").
The huge amount of tracks and material is skilfully mixed at the Flying Record Studio in Naples by Kwanzaa Posse (Carmine Tortora, Enzo Rizzo and Angelo Tardio), combining for the first time – and seamlessly – samples from TV, radio and the stadium terraces. By the time the album is released (in Italy, the first Berlusconi government has just been formed – name-checked in the lyrics of "Santa Maradona" as the president of Milan), the band has almost ceased to exist, yet the credits still list the work of eight people.

Él decide lo que va, dice lo que no será/ Decide quién la paga, dice quién vivirá/ Esa y esa tierra y ese bar son propriedad, son propriedad/ Del Señor Matanza
(“Señor Matanza”)

Although initially hailed as a minor episode, lacking the pan-Europeanism of the previous records, it is in fact a fully realised work, one that shifts the centre of gravity entirely towards the South American experience. Casa Babylon is the last true family photo, a perfect epilogue not only for the subsequent solo career of Manu Chao – which wouldn't begin, in any case, until four more years of silence had passed – but also for the rebirth of Latin rock as a whole (see Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Todos Tus Muertos in Argentina, or Maldita Vecindad and Tijuana No! in Mexico) and of European collectives like Negu Gorriak, Zebda and Amparanoia. In Italy, the influence of Manu and co. remains recognisable in bands like Fratelli di Soledad, Mau Mau and Modena City Ramblers, though if we're talking about the "Mediterraneanisation" of rock and pacifist/anti-imperialist themes, a point of contact can also be identified with Litfiba.
Mano Negra disappear without sentimentality, without an obituary, without ever having felt the need to build themselves a career, after eight years of rock'n'roll and thousands of kilometres travelled by van. They leave after reaching the top, taking with them their revolutions, their challenges to the music business, and the gratitude reserved for benefactors. They leave swearing they'll never get the band back together for a reunion, but the door of hope always remains open. Franck Mahaut (their last lighting technician) says they get together at least once a year in Paris for a pizza, and that they can't picture themselves all together on stage again: "Sometimes we talk about it, but there's always someone who disagrees. Some of us hope for it, others less so. But it'll only happen if everyone says yes, like always."

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