Ya basta

Mano Negra's rebel rock

by Josh Kun

This past February, Subcomandante Marcos issued an EZLN Internet communiqué addressed to "Musicians of the World." In it, he related how "Viejo Antonio said that music holds roads that only the knowledgeable know how to walk and that it . . . builds bridges that bring closer worlds that otherwise you wouldn't even dream about," and he offered his gratitude to a long list of bands who have all pledged their support for the Zapatista struggle in dedicatory songs, benefit concerts, and political protests -- artists who have used their music to echo the Chiapas cry for dignity and justice, "[[exclamdown]]Ya basta!" He even sent Lacandonian shout-outs to ticket sellers and roadies.

Buried midway through this cyber thank-you note was a reference to Mano Negra, the shape-shifting band of polyglot Franco-Spanish troublemakers who disbanded the same year Marcos first led the Zapatistas out of the jungle with a ski mask over his face and a Declaration of War in his hand. Their impeccable swan song -- Casa Babylon (Virgin France), one of popular music's greatest undersung masterpieces -- began with "Viva Zapata," arguably the first recorded musical tribute to Marcos' neo-Zapatismo.

The EZLN was a perfect Mano Negra cause. After taking their name from a notorious Andalusian anarchist organization in 1987, Mano Negra (whose long overdue Best Of compilation is finally available through Ark 21 this month) positioned themselves as ringleaders of an international, postcolonial underclass. They were themselves a band of ex-Europeans, a wandering gaggle of Europe's Others -- Spanish refugees, North African immigrants, Gypsies. Early songs like "Sidi H' Bibi," "Indios de Barcelona," and "Peligro" unpacked Europe as an exploding bomb of immigrant sounds (rai, zouk, reggae, flamenco) and boiling Third World anger.

Mano Negra left Europe altogether for its former colonies in Latin America beginning in 1992, when they started playing working-class port towns from the deck of a traveling ship as part of their Cargo Tour. The trip produced the most oft-cited piece of Mano Negra lore: when asked what anarchy meant on an Argentinian talk show, the band trashed the studio.

A year later, they were doing free shows with local street musicians in train stations across Colombia. It all just fed the ragga-salsa menudo of Casa Babylon's Latin American critical fury: "Señor Matanzas" chanting down Latin American dictators, "Sueño de Solentiname" dreaming of Guanajuato, Guatemala, and Panama during the same night.

The band's lead ideologue, Manu Chao, treated Mano Negra's songs like agit-pop comic books. He recycled themes ("the last wave" before the end of the world) and characters like Super Chango (the Yoruban thunder god reborn as a Latin American answer to Batman) and the kicked-around "little monkey" who "speaks his mind" and takes over cosmopolitan capitals as "King of the Bongo" and one of the "King Kong Five." Telling their stories in new ways on each album was part of Mano Negra's politics, part of their way of believing in Viejo Antonio's musical bridges and building a few of their own.

Indeed, in their seven years of operation, Mano Negra's music became a galvanizing node in an international circuit that buzzed from Tijuana to Gibraltar, connecting refugees, immigrants, exiles, and political dissidents all over the planet. As a band, they were likewise the center of a global network of musical activists that grew to include Tijuana NO in Mexico, Bad Brains in DC, and Basque separatists Negu Gorriak in Spain.

In a conversation I had with Chao a few months ago, he told me that what brought all these bands together was the same thing that had attracted Mano Negra to Marcos back in 1994. "The Zapatistas never say they're fighting for power. They don't want political responsibility. They don't want to be the president of Mexico. They just want dignity."

On the radar

* Aphex Twin having a three-way with two big-bootied, G-stringed versions of himself in "Windowlicker," his Chris Cunningham-directed Miami Bass video spoof.

* Chicago hardcore punkeros Los Crudos turning anti-racist noise into undocumented nostalgia on Los Primeros Gritos: 1991-1995 (self-released).

* Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey sharing the radio spotlight with a flock of amateur, non-ASCAP songwriters on It's All So New! (Buddha).

* Former fly girl Jennifer Lopez taking Debbie Allen's Academy Awards choreography into cyberspace in her "If You Had My Love" video.