Manu Chao concert in Berkeley

[Pierre]

Edit :sorry for the double posting. The search engine doesn't like French "e" + accent and generated an error message.


Manu Chao was the leader of a famous french band in the 90's called "La Mano Negra" (the black hand)

BERKELEY - A loopy-looking fan with a wild Mohawk climbed onto the Greek Theatre stage Friday night and crept up on world-music icon Manu Chao, here to kick off his first U.S. tour in five years. The unsuspecting singer, who performs tonight at the Shrine, was delivering an exuberant show before a delirious audience when the weird interloper appeared to clutch him from behind.

This being Berkeley, a wary security man made only a timid attempt to stop the fan, perhaps worried about sparking a free-speech incident. The hesitant guard backed away when Chao, a diminutive figure onstage, awkwardly reached up with one arm to hug the hulking but harmless admirer, who eventually slinked off by himself.

The moment was not unusual for a concert like Chao's, amped up on frenetic punk energy, entrancing reggae grooves and sociopolitical fervor, all soaked in a pungent pall of marijuana that made you feel high by osmosis. But it must have been a nerve-racking moment for Chao's Paris-based managers. They had privately fretted about how the current political climate would play out for their outspoken client, who recently called President Bush the world's most dangerous terrorist.

Whatever the risk, Chao wasn't holding his tongue on this tour. At one point he unfurled a red Zapatista flag in support of Mexican rebels in the state of Chiapas. At another, he delivered a sharp rebuke of "politicians that say lies, lies and more lies."

"They say we must fight violence with violence," he continued in heavily accented English. "That's not true. We must fight violence with education."

Not exactly a ringing slogan for someone considered a pop music messiah. But it showed that the activist artist, now 45, has not mellowed with age.

"The problem is that the more I mature, the more the world becomes unjust," Chao said in an interview before the show. "So my spirit of searching for a solution to create a world that is more balanced and fair for everyone grows more vital with every day."

Well into middle age, this elusive, almost mythical musician remains one of the most influential figures in what has come

to be called world music, a term that aptly describes the goulash of styles he cooks up in Spanish, French and English. Chao hasn't had a new studio album in five years. He doesn't even have a record label, though he has three new albums in various stages of production. And he manages his career like he says he lives his life, day to day.

Still, despite his absence from the pop spotlight, thousands turned out to see him perform with his crack, raucous band, Radio Bemba Sound System, named for a slang term meaning gossip or word of mouth. On Friday, many in the ethnically mixed crowd sang along to songs from his two solo albums and from his work with Mano Negra, the pioneering Latin alternative band he formed in the mid-1980s and named for a historic anarchist group.

You could say that Chao needs to freshen his sound and his material. But what's the point? Nothing new is more thrilling or compelling than what he does.

"We're in a period that is musically very boring," the guitarist said in Spanish, seated on a couch in a softly lighted room backstage. "But I think we're at the bottom of a bad cycle. Which means that not long from now a new musical wave will emerge, I don't know from where. It could come from Monterrey or Bombay, from Rome or Kinshasa. But it's going to sweep away everything. For now, we're just waiting for the next new thing."

The return of Manu Chao makes the wait more bearable.

Chao is the son of Spaniards who fled Franco's fascist Spain. He was raised in Paris, where he found musical kinship with other immigrants, especially North Africans, many of whom drown trying to reach Europe. He recently produced albums by Malian duo Amadou & Mariam and by Akli D, a singer-songwriter from Algeria. This unique Algerian music is the latest style Chao has absorbed into his eclectic repertoire, informed by the brash spirit of The Clash, the rootsy groove of Bob Marley and the idealistic aura of Che Guevara.

That musical stew makes his music hard to define, and that's the way he likes it.

"The last thing I need to accomplish is to define myself," he says. "I have to continue growing and never be defined."

Perhaps by design, there's a certain disconnect between Manu Chao, the public figure, and Jose Manuel Chao, the person.

He's considered a protest singer but his songs are rarely overtly political. He's revered like a guru, but he's very down to earth. He has a reputation for being hostile to the press, but he was patient and accommodating with the curious media on this tour.

After sound check, he gave a formal news conference at the Greek, attended by about 15 Bay Area reporters, many young enough to be his children. Some swarmed him after the formal Q&A, holding out their notebooks to request autographs.

Their questions were mostly about politics - immigration, the Zapatistas, globalization, terrorism. It was clear they looked to him for answers. But who does he look to?

Chao has given up on politicians. Democracy is in crisis, he says, because elections don't change underlying economic realities. And he no longer believes in revolution as a mass solution either.

"Today, the only solution I see is thousands of small revolutions," he said in the interview. "I believe in the revolution of the barrios. You and I can't change the world, but we can change ourselves. We can change our own families, and we can even change our own neighborhoods. There, nobody has excuses."

After years of wandering the world like a nomad, Chao now lives permanently in Barcelona, where he haunts the clubs of this lively mecca for immigrants and musical fusions.

He wasn't immediately recognizable Friday as he ate lunch backstage with his band. partly because his face doesn't usually appear on his illustrated CD covers. The only giveaway was his jaunty, bright red beret.

Despite lines in his face, Chao looked fit and vigorous. He says he drinks half a liter of water before breakfast every morning and occasionally fasts to cleanse his system. He's also an amateur chiropractor, pretending at one point to massage the necks of fellow musicians hunched over control panels and computer screens in recording studios. "I know how to help people," he says. "Click, click, click. I set them right straight, and they thank me. In music, it's nice to do a good show and feel appreciated, no? But when you fix the back of someone who was messed up with his energy half blocked, they appreciate it even more."

His dream is to hang out a shingle that reads, Manu Chao: Chiropractor. He'd be the town curandero, offering the folk remedies he's learned from his travels. If only he could retire from show business.

"Two or three times in my life I have tried to put on the brakes, but I can't find them," he says. "There are so many projects that appeal to me and so much music that rouses my passion, I can't stop."

Chao displayed that musical enthusiasm at one point by interrupting a photo session on the stone steps of Berkeley's open-air amphitheater, while his band rehearsed on the stage below. I was caught up in the unusual rhythms when he surprised me with a tap on the shoulder.

He wanted me to know the band was playing the music from Algeria that he had mentioned in the interview. He flashed the smile of someone who loves to share his passion, then scampered back up the steps for more pictures.

Chao says he thought he would retire after "Clandestino," the acclaimed 1988 album that established him as a solo act.

"I was sincerely convinced that would be my last album," he said. "I was sure it wouldn't work and my fans would throw rocks at me. But. look," - here he grabs himself by the collar of his shirt - "that album grabbed me from behind and said, 'You come back here.' "

Chao released his most recent studio album just before the terrorist attacks of 2001. It was titled "Pr