Mano Negra

Before anyone talked about "world music" or about "fusion" as something cool, Mano Negra was already doing it full throttle: punk, ska, rumba, salsa, reggae, Arabic raï, all thrown together in the same song, sung in French, Spanish, English and Arabic, sometimes within a single track. They gave their own invention a name — "patchanka" — and built with it one of the wildest and freest bands of its time. And the adventure that best captures them was also the one that undid them, in the middle of a train journey through Colombia.

Paris, but with its heart everywhere

Mano Negra formed in 1987, in the Paris region, led by Manu Chao alongside his brother Antoine and his cousin Santiago Casariego. They were French, but their soul was everywhere: in immigration, in Latin America, in mixed neighbourhoods, in the streets of the world. That cosmopolitan, street-level outlook defined everything they did.

Their music was pure energy and controlled chaos. They took the attitude of punk — fast, raw, rebellious — and stuffed it with every rhythm that crossed their path, with no respect for labels or for the borders between genres. The result was infectious, danceable and political all at once. Patchanka, from 1988, and Puta's Fever, from 1989, brought anthems like "Mala Vida" and "King Kong Five", which became classics for a whole generation that felt like citizens of the world.

A ship that was not theirs

What makes them legendary are their journeys, and it is worth telling them properly, because the short version gives them more than they are owed and takes away the best part.

In March 1992 they sailed from Nantes aboard the Melquiades, an old bulk carrier converted into a floating stage. The project was called Cargo 92 and it was not Mano Negra's: it was put together by the Nantes street-theatre company Royal de Luxe, as a critical response to the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's arrival. Also on board were Philippe Decouflé's dance company and Philippe Genty's puppet theatre. Mano Negra was one of the artistic crews, not the owner of the ship.

Being passengers takes nothing away from them; quite the opposite. It was eighty days of sailing, a hundred or so performances in six ports along the Atlantic coast and around a million and a half spectators. A rock band inside a cultural expedition on that scale is not something you see twice.

The train where they broke

The next feat is the one everybody remembers, and it is also where the story is usually told backwards. Between November and December 1993 they boarded El Expreso del Hielo: a refitted train that ran along abandoned tracks in Colombia for some forty-five days, with close to a hundred musicians, acrobats and performers, giving free concerts in towns nobody else reached — Santa Marta, Aracataca, Bosconia, Barrancabermeja, La Dorada, Facatativá — in the middle of a period of extreme violence.

It is often said that the tour "ended up wearing the band down". It did not wear them down: it broke them right there. On reaching Aracataca, García Márquez's town, Mano Negra fell apart. Santiago Casariego, Philippe Teboul and almost everyone else quit and went back to France at the end of November. Manu Chao and a couple of others stayed on the train and reached Bogotá with the line-up incomplete.

Out of that journey came Casa Babylon, released in 1994 and recorded with the group already broken. The name was formally abandoned shortly afterwards. Manu's father, the journalist Ramón Chao, was on board and told the whole story in a book, Un tren de hielo y fuego.

The prophet who was left

Out of those ashes came something enormous: Manu Chao began a solo career and, with Clandestino, in 1998, became a worldwide phenomenon, selling millions of copies and turning into a kind of prophet of mestizo music and social causes. Everything Manu Chao would later be was already there, in embryo, in the wild adventure of Mano Negra.

What to remember

Mano Negra was a band deeply ahead of its time: they made cultural mixture their flag when the world still thought in compartments, and they brought every rhythm and every language together into a single furious party.

But what says most about them is not the mixture, it is how far they took it. They got on a ship and a train to play where nobody else played, and the second journey ran them over. Some bands split from exhaustion, from money or from egos; this one broke apart at a station in Colombia, halfway through, for having gone too far. Every time "Mala Vida" plays and the whole world fits into a single song, there they are, reminding us that truly free music charges its price.

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Sources

Mano Negra was a French band formed in 1987 in the Paris region — the English Wikipedia places it in Paris and the French version in Sèvres — led by Manu Chao alongside his brother Antoine Chao and his cousin Santiago Casariego. They coined the term "patchanka" for their mixture of punk, ska, rumba, salsa, reggae, raï and other styles, sung in French, Spanish, English and Arabic. Albums: "Patchanka" (1988), "Puta's Fever" (1989), "King of Bongo" (1991) and "Casa Babylon" (1994); among their best-known tracks, "Mala Vida" and "King Kong Five". In March 1992 they took part in Cargo 92, a cultural expedition organised by the street-theatre company Royal de Luxe to mark the five hundredth anniversary, aboard the cargo ship "Melquiades", together with Philippe Decouflé's dance company and Philippe Genty's puppet theatre; the voyage covered some 80 days of sailing, around a hundred performances in six ports and close to 1.5 million spectators. Between November and December 1993 they took part in El Expreso del Hielo, a train tour along abandoned tracks in Colombia lasting some 45 days with free concerts in Santa Marta, Aracataca, Bosconia, Barrancabermeja, La Dorada, Facatativá and Bogotá. On reaching Aracataca, most of the members — among them Santiago Casariego and Philippe Teboul — abandoned the tour and returned to France at the end of November 1993; Manu Chao carried on with an incomplete line-up. The album "Casa Babylon" (1994) was recorded after that break-up and the group's name was formally abandoned between 1994 and 1995. Ramón Chao, Manu's father, recounted the Colombian tour in the book "Un tren de hielo y fuego". "Clandestino" (1998), Manu Chao's first solo album, sold millions of copies worldwide. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Royal de Luxe, Semana, Vice, the English and French Wikipedia and other coverage.