After 17 years without an album, the Franco-Spanish singer Manu Chao returns on Friday with “Viva Tu” and its Latin sounds, which revive the good memories of a generation that he rocked on the road to vacations as well as in revolts.
“Thank you for the energy! Thank you for the hope!”, shouted Manu Chao on Tuesday, arms outstretched and big smile, transcended by the crowd under the marquee of the Kilowatt, a cultural space in an industrial zone of Vitry-sur-Seine, south of Paris.
“Generous” on stage and “authentic”, in the eyes of the spectators met by AFP, the artist known in Europe, famous in South America and who plays as far as Asia, is associated with “good memories”.
In a reduced and acoustic formation, the ex-singer of the group Mano Negra is still connected to alternative rock and electrified the audience for two hours, mainly covering a succession of hits from the time Clandestine (1998), his first solo opus with European and South American influences.
Bongo Bong, Welcome to Tijuana, I don’t love you anymore — among other successes — represent for Clara Machin, 39, the Proust madeleine of a holiday in Cuba: “It was the CD of this trip and I still have the image in the car, with my father, listening to this album,” she confided. The father, 68, claims to have always “loved Manu.”
In a “wave of nostalgia”, Alexia Guermonprez, 44, connects it to her adolescence, that time “when we are convinced that we speak Spanish fluently”, “that joy of living and that desire to change the world too”.
“Young hippies”
This new album Long live youa call to believe in oneself, is not a complete comeback: at 63, José Manuel Tomás Arturo Chao Ortega, known as Manu Chao, had not completely disappeared from the musical landscape, avoiding the media and continuing to perform concerts in human-sized venues, where he himself takes care of the ticket prices.
With his minimalist and repetitive lyrics, mainly in Spanish, his sound samples reused here and there, all wrapped up in warm rhythms where guitar and percussion are omnipresent, his style is recognizable in a few notes.
For the rest, the artist delivers titles that are always committed like We go to the sea (Neighbors on the sea), on immigration, written with Kurdish refugees in Athens. And offers side steps like You’re Going in a duet with the French rapper Laeti, country punk Heaven’s Bad Day or the eponymous rumba of the album in which he celebrates his neighbors in Barcelona, where he lives.
“If I start to fit into a formula of things that people expect of me and that I already know how to do, I’ll get bored very quickly,” he assures, in an interview given to his label Because, ahead of this release.
“Musically, when I was 16-17, I didn’t even dream of half of everything that happened to me. […] “, he also notes.
Manu Chao “is freedom first, money, he doesn’t care”, assures Alain “Gaston” Rémy, author of the biographical comic strip From Mano to Manu Chao“He comes from punk, we were little punks with him, we became old hippies with him… and he engendered young hippies,” he notes.
On listening platforms, the artist is indeed attracting a younger audience and his hits are embellishing “stories” on the social network TikTok. In 2023, he achieved “more than 835 million “streams” across all platforms,” according to his label.
Séverine, 49, passed the Chao virus on to her daughter, now 20, who accompanies her to the concert at the Kilowatt: “Since then, even when she no longer has a connection with her phone via Bluetooth, she retrieves my Manu Chao CDs to put them in the car!”