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

 

THE LOVED CHRONIQUEUR OF THE
GIBRALTAR STRAIT

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.

"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.

"LAST NIGHT I DREAMED
ABOUT REALITY"

It is not what Manu Chao 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 you meet, killing time near the Strait, just loves Manu Chao.

He's one of the guys.