Manu Chao, an incorrigible anti-globalization activist: "Let's rebel against the laws of the internet."
The singer of "Me gustas tu" arrives in Cernobbio tonight: his greatest hits performed in acoustic versions.
“What time are you, my heart?” It's Manu Chao 's turn again, in concert this evening in Cernobbio at Lake Sound Park, riding the wave of acclaim that Alfa 's reworking of “ Me gustas tú ” has revitalized on the radio. “A mi piace” is a clever move, capable of achieving a perfect result. He, the former Mano Negra re-emerged from the hell of Patchinko, collaborates little or not at all on the song, but his young partner from Genoa (and Genoan) knows his stuff (just remember what he was capable of at Sanremo with Vecchioni's “Sogna ragazzo sogna”) and the juxtaposition of the two names was enough to see the single's price soar, even remixed by Planetfunk; it has been in the Italian Top 10 for two and a half months and proudly ranks second again this week behind Anna's “Désolée”.
Among the many Italian artists he's known for, the man behind "Próxima Estación: Esperanza" has so far only recorded with Roy Paci ("Toda joia toda beleza") and, indeed, Alfa, partly because of his local roots ("Only three cities in the world can give me special emotions: Barcelona, Marseille, and Genoa," he once said). But the list of collaborations he's landed in recent times isn't limited to the Ligurian singer-songwriter, as demonstrated by projects shared with Latin superstar Karol G ("Viajando por el mundo") and Mexican rap star Santa Fe Klan ("Solamente").
Chao's setlist is filled with hits from career-defining albums like "Clandestino" and "La Radiolina," but usually includes "Vecinos en el mar," a snippet from "Viva Tu," released last September after 17 years of (relative) recording silence. "That 'long live you' is primarily meant to be an exhortation: believe in yourself because I'm the first to do so," explains the 64-year-old Franco-Galician singer-guitarist, arguably the most committed anti-globalization artist of the 1990s, born José Manuel Arturo Tomás Chao Ortega. With this "Ultra Acoustic" performance, he closes the 2025 program at Lake Sound Park. "The society we live in, in fact, never makes us feel beautiful enough, intelligent enough, unique enough. Because if you listen to the web or TV, there's always someone more beautiful than us, more intelligent than us, more interesting than us, richer than us we should be like. And it's from that belief that all our mistakes begin. The exhortation of a title like 'Viva Tu' is precisely to stay the way we are. This is because, ultimately, whether or not we are beautiful people depends only on us."
Il Giorno
