What's Up Manu?
Hi, Manu! So when's this new album due out then? "Clandestino" is already three years old.
Three years? What's three years? Every record we make is
designed to have a whole lifetime ahead of it.
"Clandestino", is like a kid that has brought itself up: it
brought itself up without me having to run around after it. I
feel as if this record has done the rounds, been all over the
place, like the folk songs that everyone likes. I first began to
feel proud of it when a street musician in Argentina told me
that a few songs from "Clandestino" earned him enough for
his meals for the day.
A million copies in France, and another million in the rest of
the world, that's quite exceptional, and a difficult feat to
achieve again?
Luckily I haven't looked at the experience in those terms! I
write songs, which may or may not succeed, and I have
been on the road for twenty years. "Clandestino" changed
just one thing: I've found a place, in Barcelona, to put my
cases down between trips. I have a bedroom, a studio in the
living room and for a living room, I have the nearby square
and the streets round about. The world is not far away:
going back out into it is by no means a feat.
You have always maintained that for you making music and travelling are the same thing: how did you view this new sound journey?
I charged straight ahead, as usual! No, seriously "Clandestino" meant that I had more space than ever before. I began by searching
through my old stuff to see what I could find there and then put together a few initial outlines, adding in some new ideas. Renaud (Letang,
co-producer), and I complement each other: I start off with a series of interlinked elements and he gives them a specific sequence. Then
I change them around again until we are happy! As it happens, two trips were decisive in the general sound of this album: two tours in
South America.
They don't want to let go of you over there!
And I don't want them to! They give out hugely strong emotions and I feel a passionate connection with them. When I first went to
Bolivia, it felt as if I was learning to breathe again for the very first time. My singing style matured in a few weeks up there. When I got
back I practically started the album again from scratch! It is scattered with little imps that have escaped from "Clandestino", but at the
same time it is completely different, more direct, more varied, more animal. I know it's hungry. and I hope it makes people hungry!
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