Manu Chao, the review of Viva tu

Few musicians are children of their time like Manu Chao. Not to minimize his talent and legacy, nor to mythologize times gone by, the world has always been dirty and bad and, indeed, in recent decades there have been many steps forward in terms of rights and social achievements (if we see the glass half full); it is that someone like him could reach the peak of creativity, thought and senseonly in the nineties. In the decade, that is, of My name is never againnot by chance closed within two months, in mid-2001, between the G8 in Genoa And September 11th: an era of injustice and contrasts, like all of them, but also of roundabouts, pacifist dreams; if there was a utopia admitted by the spirit of the times, it was that the last would find their own redemption, that united we were Better and that the future smiles on those who thought so ‒ in our country, these are the years of the hangover of the United Europe. Again: it was a utopia, but socially shared.

The music of such José Manuel Arturo Tomás Chao Ortega maybe it wasn’t, a utopia, but it’s no coincidence that he reached his peak precisely in that period. Born in 1963, he has a story behind him that speaks for itself: born in Paris to Spanish parents exiled from Franco’s regime, he plays a melting pot of cultures, in language (he sings in Spanish, Galician, French, Arabic, English, Portuguese and Italian: a singing babel) and style, mixing rock, folk, reggae, ska, flamenco and dozens of other codes, mostly Latin. Those who know the records made with Manonegra or the solo debut of the cornerstone Clandestine ‒ a bottomless pit of quotes and copyrights, released in 1998 ‒ knows that it is harder to give than to do, and that the so-called patchanka has its roots in certain works by the Clash from 1980 or thereabouts, but in context it can only feed on in the And of the nineties ‒ he arrived in Italy, with mixed fortunes, colonizing the May Day Concert for a lifetime.

It goes without saying that the texts tell «the last ones»The Third World (another constant in the debate at the end of the millennium, not like now), that every piece borders on rhetoric and that Manu Chao himself, who remains a champion of the circuit, capable of reaching an unthinkable fame and considered a voice of the “forgotten”, of the clandestine precisely, a little angry and a little romantic, always kind and an outsider, does not always come out of it very well. Clandestine there is one, what came after was sometimes too similar and therefore uninspired, to the point of negligible The little radio (2007), his last known recording address before shaping his life according to the ideas of freedom and mixing he professed: he left for a neverending tour closed only during Covid, nomadic style, with a large following in Italy; and has opened a place in the neighborhood of Barcelonawhere he lives, to give concreteness to his vision of the world as a huge commune and create a place that is a crossroads of people.

Then the turning point: 17 years after the last time, a new album is coming out tomorrow, Long live you. And ‒ surprise? ‒ its author is exactly where we left him. Yes, of course, it must have been worth it and the inspiration has come to its senses, net of the lack of rhythmic interlocking, from cumbiawhich made it irresistible, set aside in favor of a kind but less festive climatelargely built on the combination of guitar and voice honed in the intimate phases of the interminable tour (with melancholic and poignant songs, it must be said, such as Four streets). Just as there are, here and there, small openings to novelties thanks to the guests, whether it be the country unpublished and contaminated by Willie Nelson or the intervention of the French rapper Laetiwith which in You go hits one of the most beautiful episodes, a straight reggae that also smells of dust and street. However, here, the coordinates are the same: in a River whyamong the many, it is not difficult to hear the echo, 25 years later, of Bongo Bongoand in general it is the usual mix of Latin genres, idealistic messages, story of the last with the usual tones, including the touch, that is the humanization of those who are on the margins, which has always characterized it. At most there is a slightly more open look, as the title-track itself testifies, a wish of “good life” addressed “to everyone”, now that humanity in general seems more on its knees than it was twenty years ago and many, not only in the South of the World, need the good star of Manu Chao.

And from here the first, substantial crack in the wall. Long live you it is a utopia like all the rest of his songbook, it has the same merits and the same exaggerations, the same small falls, especially in rhetoric. It is also an example of “slow life” in musical terms, as is the author himself, loved wherever he goes despite not having published songs for almost twenty years, followed live also in Italy; he does not need to update himself, to look for the sensational shot, to end up in the playlists at all costs, but it can be a sort of independent republic. Even the texts are always there: the drama of the migrantshe had described it years ago, so imagine. The point is that having kept the bar straight, in this sense, is alienating.

In spite of a soul that was never ecumenical, the one that transformed the proselytes of the Seventies John Lennon Imagine in an evergreen, the attitude from outsider by Manu Chao places it in contrast with the times and makes everything more out of phase. Long live you it is not the ghost of Christmas past, but the game of mirrors of an artist who has never stopped believing in it and with the same cheek, with the same ways as always, comes to ask us to account for what we have become. He has not changed one iota, but the world that in some way responded to his stimuli, that fed him, has. It has lost, above all, the impetus towards utopia ‒ however unattainable, however foolishbanal ‒ which had at the time of Clandestine. He has become embittered, dried up, and so has the music. There remains the doubt of a possible dialogue with Generation Z, which speaks a different language than that of Manu Chao and which at the moment does not seem to succeed. For now he addresses to others, with whom he has shared a piece of the road, an imaginary: he has not lost his dreams, we have; and it is not necessarily a good thing.