Long live you opens with Vecinos In The Sea ; its first notes of acoustic guitar, its vaguely cumbia rhythm, its sound effects inherited from Jamaican dub take us back more than twenty-five years, when Manu Chao launched the unforgettable Clandestine. For the (now) old fans, Long live you will be a musical journey through that time, when Chao, the eternal wanderer in love with South America, embodied, like Bob Marley before him, the alter-globalization pop star. Has he changed? A little, all the same: this first original album in 17 years is much more sedate. Calmer? Less militant? None of these new compositions, pleasant in any case, make us want to scream “ Mano negra clandestina / Peruano clandestino / Africano clandestino / Marihuana illegal! ” The general spirit of this album leans more towards the side of Bongo Bong (“I don’t love you anymore / My love”) than Malegria. We will get used to it, regretting the absence of these unifying refrains which forged him and which he recalls, all the same, on the two superb reggae songs in the finale, Lonely Night And Tantas Terres.
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