The multilingual global-pop busker is back with his first album in 17 years Manu Chao performs at Circolo Magnolia of Segrate on Aug. 1, 2024, in Milan, Italy. Sergione Infuso/Corbis/Getty Images first made a splash in the late Nineties with his fantastic debut solo album, , the work of a multilingual, post-modern leftist busker whose music seemed to infuse the everything-at-once sonics of Beck’s with the spirit of Woody Guthrie, Bob Marley, and Joe Strummer.
The title appropriated a derogatory term for undocumented immigrants, and Manu Chao (who was born in Paris to Spanish parents and had previously been in the Clash-y French rock band Mano Negra) made the album traveling around the world producing songs on the fly on his laptop — “a clown making too much dirty sound,” calling for anti-globalist resistance in music that mixed reggae, hip-hop, Latin beats, earthy folk tunes, and digital samples. The result was a playful, joyful, and fluid good time, especially as albums that sample Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos go. He followed that with the equally excellent 2001 album ebulliently chirping his “merry blues” on infectious tunes like the bookstore/coffee shop hit “Me Gustas Tu” (over 700,000,000 streams to date!).
But he hasn’t made an album since 2007’s more rock-oriented , which makes his new one, , such a welcome surprise. Until we solve capitalism, we need this guy and his guitar around. “This is not success/This is not progress/Just a collect.