Notes

The following originally appeared in the GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS:

The world has shrunken. 

So goes a popular platitude… and in an age that has seen cheap and ubiquitous air travel, giant Wal-Marts swollen with NAFTA-enabled foreign goods, widespread international outsourcing of labor and an Internet that allows a toy store in Hong Kong to reach customers in Peoria, this is one saying that rings true today. 

Nor has popular music been entirely immune to this trend.  Witness, for example, the astonishing career of pop polyglot Manu Chao.

Since emerging as the leader of the influential French rock band Mano Negra in the late 1980s, Chao has perched on the peak of a globe-girdling tsunami of performers and artists willing to draw from the musical palettes of many different countries in the pursuit of their art.  The 44-year-old singer-songwriter is a multi-linguist’s dreamboat, his songs an entoxicating blend of French, Spanish and English lyrics set to an equally eclectic montage of relentless dance beats, South American folk flourishes and comically flatulent synth riffs, leavened liberally with musique-concrete samples galore.  Listening to one of his albums is like undertaking an international tour at supersonic speeds — around the world in 80 minutes.

His role as a global synthesist came naturally to the young man born as Oscar Tramor in Spain, but raised in France, the son of well-regarded novelist and journalist Raymond Chao.  As a teenager, Chao the younger came under the influence of U.S. rockabilly and British punk rock — especially the Clash.  He was also inspired by the music of the Spanish Revolution.  He formed his first band, a French rockabilly combo called Les Hot Pants, in the early 1980s. 

But in 1986, Chao came together with his brother Tonio and his cousin Santiago Casiriego to create the band that would secure him a place on the world stage of popular music.  Mano Negra (named after a Spanish anarchist organization) scored a major French hit with the song “Mala Vida” from their 1988 debut album PATCHANKA, drawing the attention of Virgin Records, which signed the band worldwide the following year.

Over the next five years, Mano Negra became huge stars the world over… except in the United States, where their glossological dexterity made them a marketing challenge.  The band called it quits in 1994.  But Chao’s career was far from over.  Four years later, he issued his debut solo album, CLANDESTINO, which included the huge international hit, “Bongo Bong,” a re-recording of an old Mano Negra number that benefited greatly from its lazy, insistent hook and silly, sotto voce lyrics. 

Since then, Chao has continued to defy generic boundaries with subsequent releases like his sophomore effort, PROXIMA ESTACION: ESPERANZA, which found the artist sprinkling Caribbean rhythms into his unique musical stew.  Already a superstar in much of the world, and with his profile growing within the United States, it is safe to say there will be more border-crossing to come from this musical alchemist.

We’ll further examine the career of Manu Chao in this space in the near future.  Join us then for a look at an artist who, in helping shrink the globe, has enormously expanded the world of pop music.