Manu Chao

"My life stopped between Ceuta and Gibraltar. I'm a beam in the sea, a phantom in the city, my life is forbidden".

Anonymous and his singer

 

For when the musical?

I suppose within 20 years or so.

50 people in pittoresquely vagabond clothes designed by Gaultier, all standing up to end the movie with the sing-along-song "Oh Gibraltar".

And we'll all take out our handkerchief, because of the noble hero that did not make it, and his mother staring at a point in the distance.

In the mean time there is nothing pittoresque about it. That's the misfortune of poor people.

They do not have all teeth, they can not afford shampoo, they did not have an education so they might not give you the polite thank you you are expecting... they are not cuddly.

If only they were, all tourists would run to the rescue. Now they are just dirty or different.

"Last night I dreamed about reality..."

Once every two or three decades there is this singer, that really crushes the lily in the soul of many.

French-Basque-Galician Manu Chao has got it, an empathy and a poetic phrasing that makes audiences nod: yes, yes, this is exactly how it is.

Here's Clandestino with english subtitles and here is Manu in the region of the song, between Ceuta and Gibraltar, the provinces of Tangier and Cadiz.

Why he touches a nerve...

It is not what he tells. The world of music is saturated with "why are the children poor" songs.

It is not really the empathy either. Phil Collins is a lot more dramatic.

But the homeless do not hum Phil Collins and the hungry do not sing "We are the world".

'Clandestinos' do love and sing Manu Chao. He provokes a smile. The lyrics are never dramatic. They are poetic, in a spanish-arabic-latino way, and he sings them very matter-of-factly, suggesting that also this is just a way of life, that things are as they are - inchallah, que sera sera. Nothing you can do about it. Amor fati, or the love for fate.

Just about every person "lost in the century, lost in the world", that me myself I met, in a highly complicated way being on the way from Haiti to Spain and killing time near the Strait, just loved Manu Chao. He's one of the guys.

"They call me the disappeared one
When I arrive i have already gone
When they look for me, i'm no longer there
When they meet me, it's not me".

From Desaparecido.