The words from the last album are: “I came from the hole...”

Yeah, but I was lucky, I come from a family that's never had any financial problems. I also had to grow up in a united family, and not everyone’s, especially in the environment where I grew up, the families were very divided, just problems in the houses. I have a family that has given me a lot of culture and love, and thank you very much, and thank you very much, and thank you very much.

It is cursed in the mouths of many, but nothing like the neighborhoods around Paris seems to see what the world is and what life is to learn.

It is true that in our gang there were North Africans, Malians, Senegalese, Portuguese, other French. And also many Armenians in the neighborhood, the strong gang belonged to the Armenians, ugh, watch out for them! We had a gang phenomenon. We declared war on the gang in the other neighborhood; “We are from Sevres, and we defend our perimeter, and the neighbors next to us are our rivals!” I used to go there too, but I'll tell you the truth, I wasn't an activist, I don't have the violence, but I was going to kick the gang. I didn’t give because I didn’t like it and I didn’t even receive it, the gang protected me well. I was like a pet, and I don't know why they took me all the way because I was lucky or... I was also in robberies, and when I docked the gas stations, I crapped my pants, but I always went, maybe because of morbid or something. Then began my double life, on the one hand the school life, and on the other the gang life. I got schizophrenia, and I couldn't reconcile the two.

You have counted from the hard, now from the beautiful, the life of the neighborhood to break the curses.

Now it’s completely changed, it’s become a far-right city. But when I grew up, it was a communist city, because Renault's factory was there. The factory was closed when I was about ten years old and all the workers were taken away to be sent to other places where there was no work anymore. Then we stopped an empty city, a ghost town. Everything for us. Open a door and install it there. It was a gigantic occupation. We all had three or four apartments. And from the outside many people came to occupy it, some with conscience, others because they were mere bandits, or dockers. There was everything there. And it's been my luck to live in that area as a teenager. For me it was a terrible workshop of life.

What was your home like in Sevres?

It was close to a scream, which I valued a lot. Before the war, his grandfather spent the day in Gorbea and spent the last years of his life in the jungles of Paris. I grew up in that forest with my grandfather. At the table of our house there was never a lack of a mixture of ziza. My grandfather used to collect them.

What was his name?

Assisted by Tomás. He was a very honorable person, honorable to the point of being mediocre. He liked Gorbea so much, he always talked to us about the area, but even after the arrival of democracy he never wanted to go back there. Democracy was not a victory. We said, “Grandpa, we’re all going to Gorbea, we’re all going to take a walk, that time has passed, right?” But in vain, he did not return because of his convictions. And for mediocrity. “They won’t see me there until the Republic comes back!” the King couldn’t swallow that. I would have gone crazy to take that ride with him to Gorbea. And I finally left, but with her ashes. He died in Paris. And we went to take the ashes to Gorbea, we took the ride with my mother, Fermin, the whole gang.

You always mention your father, Ramon Chao, writer and journalist, in Le Mond, Le Monde Diplomatique, but...

And the pianist too. No one knows, but my father first studied piano. My grandfather decided that my father would learn to play the piano, and that’s it, there was no discussion.

But I wanted to ask you about your mother, from Bilbao. What did your mother teach you?

My mother is my mentor. My dad's crazier than me, ha, ha... My mother is a scientist, she analyzes everything, favorable, contrary, and do I ever have political doubts? Pick up the phone and say, “Mom, what do you think of this?” I love the political talk I have with my mother. The mother is a force, calm. And I have a mother for advice.

And you're paying attention to him?

Well, now it is. There was a time when I didn't do it. And he suffered a lot. When I quit all my studies at the age of eighteen and decided to dedicate myself to music, I made my mother desperate. If my mother came out of nowhere, it was because of her studies, and how can I understand her leaving everything? But instead of following his advice I followed intuition, and I think it was one of the few times I didn’t follow his advice and I made it up.

It is said that it cost not only Mother but Paris to understand what she had given to your music.

My music school wasn't Paris. Paris wasn't interested in what we did. There was thanks to Brittany, thanks to some places in Belgium, we started playing there, even if it was in bars, for a snack, or for a kick in the ass. Paris was the last to open its doors to us. The alternative had already been introduced, several important bands were taking over, Berurier Noir, or Kortatu, who arrived in Paris and were important. However, we also discovered this whole world and we all came together for a very clear reason: to protect ourselves from the neo-Nazis.

I'm asking and asking questions, and I'm looking for your answers, but you're more of a man of questions than a man of answers.

It’s easier to ask questions than to find answers. I'm full of unanswered questions, and I think everyone is. And I think we need to know how to live with it, for the better for the worse. But as the Galician writer Conceiro said, “it’s not about finding the treasure, it’s about looking for it.”

And when you find the answer?

When you’ve answered a question, there’s always another question, that’s what’s beautiful in this life. And the most beautiful are the children’s questions, as a friend from my neighborhood said, “In the children’s questions there are truths for everyone.” The children’s questions are arrows thrown straight into the truth.

Will you always keep having a baby?

I try, that's the philosophy of my life. I know it’s impossible because society has already included me in the format, I went through school, I went through education, I’ve gone through it and it can’t be done, but as a creator I try to revive the child I was, I try to analyze it as little as possible with my brain. And if someone tells me, “but what did you mean by this music?” my answer is, “I don’t know.” A child never stops to think about what he has said. He said it, and that's it.

This is also what someone said: the city is a book that is read with legs.

The reason for this. I'm a city rat, and a city is known on foot, the city is pedestrian. That’s why I’m from the cities I love, and I’ll never be from Los Angeles, I’ll always be from New York, because New York is read on foot, even if you don’t know where you’re going. I’m from Rio, carioca, not Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo forces you to have a car, and I don’t have a car, I live in Barcelona, without a car. And it takes me for a walk.

Besides, it’s not just about reading, every leg that walks writes the city.

Because what the legs give is proximity. When you walk in a second you are inside the store, or inside the bar, and if you pass by in the car, you say, “oh, how nice, if we could stop here one day! “We’re not going to park.” And you see things and your curiosity slows down... but it doesn't stop. If you walk, five minutes are always left.

I'm not going to ask you how inspiration comes out, but how it comes in. How do you feed inspiration?

By walking around. And there's marijuana too. I smoke a little jigsaw, and if I don’t have a pen and paper handy I get nervous because the ideas start jumping. I don’t want to say that marijuana is good for everything, I never smoke a pipe before climbing the stage, because the effect can be the opposite, it takes away the flame, and I’m not a porrero. If there is no cake, and I don’t care, I don’t have dependency, but if I have a little half hour for creativity, I like it, I’m good at creating it. Inside a jug, I always get a minute of poetry, it helps me reach my margins, it helps me to go back to my childhood, it destructures my brain, and I get more foolish, more daring phrases.

Does alcohol inspire you?

It's just like that. How many songs I haven't written drunk at five in the morning in a bar corner. In these cases, the hands walk on their own, the brain is somewhere else. Of course, I get pretty things and nonsense, but I like it.

You write words of melancholy, but you're a man of humor.

I like the humor, I like the five o'clock meeting in the morning, I like the regueifa...

I like you...

Haha, haha, haha. I like that art, that direct improvisation, verbal and mental. I love those little hours of gossip that go through the yoke of alcohol, that's where I feel so happy. At five in the morning in a bar, the word reaches its maximum, and the sentences arrive that no one will remember the next day, because no one has written them. But that’s where the most beautiful poems in history have gone.

If someone told you at five in the morning: Manu, tomorrow morning you'll wake up with a deficiency. Eyes or ears, you'll lose one of them, choose whatever you want.

For now, it's the eyes that want to go first. The ears are more tuned than ever, so I guess it's going to hit the eyes. And frankly, I'm more upset when I look blind than when I look deaf.

Don't worry, you'll never be seen blind.

Haha, haha, haha. But I'm more afraid of darkness than silence.

Darkness and the unseen almost always go together. Racism is something like that.

Yes, but racism is not of a certain color, racism is universal. There is immense racism between blacks and Moors, or between blacks and indigenous people in South America. A lot of people say, and I get angry: “Racism is white.” It's a lie. The problem with the white man is that he's become the most powerful with history, and then the most violent is him, but the racist is everybody. What if there was another one in power? The same one. The problem is the relationship between man and power. It is disappointing and sad, it seems that if any human being of any race comes to power and acquires some power, he loves to shatter what is beneath him.

How to find harmony?

Harmony is one of the most beautiful words. It's good for everything. And the theory is discovered. You read the Bible and there you have it, we will all love each other, when they give you a slap put the other cheek, wonderful. But that's just theory.

The one you forget as soon as you close the book.

And the same in the Qur’an, you read and marvellous, we will all love each other, we will all share everything, but the hour of practice comes and everyone kicks each other.

Are you an atheist?

I don't know anymore. I've always been, but now I don't know. But I do. No... yeah, I'm an atheist.

Yes or no?

Yeah, I'm an atheist because I'm a scientist. My mother and the religion of my home is the scientific spirit. Give me proof that God exists and I will accept it, but I have no proof. And besides, I read books on the one hand, and on the other I see how the world is, and I don't know, or God doesn't exist, or he's not that high. Maybe it's human.

Does democracy exist?

The democracy that is presented to us is a dictatorship, a dictatorship of money. Politicians are no longer in charge. You have to buy shares to vote today. If you could vote for Exxon's CEO, that's a real vote, a vote with political strength. When democracy is mentioned today, it means whether you have actions or not. And they are bought, because that is where everything is decided, not in the courts or in the parliament. The economy has won the battle over politics, and the politicians who demand our vote, those who want us to look elegant on TV rather than an election show, those are pure show-business.

They say we should all vote for the White House. Would you vote?

Of course I'd vote. I have always voted. If I was born in France, it’s because my grandfather played his skin, and why did my grandfather play his skin? For us to have the right to vote. I understand very well the debate that is here in the hostels, half of my schools do not vote, I understand them, but I will vote for my grandfather all my life. The worst part is that I have never voted for anyone, I have always voted against something. And thousands of people like me. Like when Le Pen went over to the headboard, imagine the inner fire of all of us having to put that fucking Chirac paperwork in the box. I’ve never really felt like saying “this is who I am” on paper.

The personality is similar in this, it is written on a piece of paper, inserted in the pocket. But it doesn’t always feel like “this represents me,” I don’t know if your case is.

I grew up in France, but we used to wipe our asses in a neighborhood with the question of nationality. I respect the culture of the place where I grew up, but I don’t proudly pronounce the name of my place of origin, and when they ask me “do you feel French?” I respond “I don’t know what you’re talking about”. Nationality is not a political issue, but a philosophy of life. I spent years saying that I felt like a citizen of the world, and it’s true, I feel like I’m from Rio de Janeiro, I feel like I’m from Ceará, from the north east of Brazil, because my son is from there, and because I fell in love with that place, I feel like I’m from Galicia, and I feel like I’m also from the Basque Country. So I keep saying that I belong to the world, that is my path, but now I have refined the words a little, and a new answer comes to me: I am a citizen of the present moment, the moment, that is my nationality, because that is the only home that I can never escape.

If you went back to school and were asked to draw the map of the world, how would you draw it?

I don't know, I'm not very good at drawing, but I'd try to make it right. I spent my youth among the maps of the world. When I was ten or eleven, nobody in geography beat me, not even the lady, I knew everything; the atlas I knew by heart, the villages of India, Thailand, New Guinea, Papuasia, everything. We used to play around asking each other questions at home, and my Basque grandmother gave me an atlas. Well, first he tried one of those world balls, he brought it to me on a birthday, and I loved it, but in half a minute I got a huge reprimand. I was playing football with the ball.

That's what presidents do.

Yeah, but we did it when we were kids. And after seeing it, my grandmother gave me an atlas.

How would you paint Cuba? In what color?

Tostadito, a little toasted.

The one who was punished.

Yes, even the left-wing press. They only spread the wrong information, and that hurts me. They are always saying the same, “Cuba is a dictatorship.” All right, all right. But what about Colombia? This exemplary South American democracy, isn't it a dictatorship? Which is better, whether you are a dissident in Cuba or a dissident in Colombia? I ask that question. I think I'd rather be a dissident in Cuba. If you are a dissident in Cuba you may be imprisoned, but if you are a trade unionist in Colombia, how much life expectancy do you have? A year, or two? Because you're not going to go to jail! So whoever has to criticize Cuba should first clean up their kitchen!

And how would you draw Venezuela?

Like a huge rocket. Venezuela is today’s laboratory, a laboratory that is trying to change things and create new methods of coexistence. And if there are people reading this interview who want to travel to South America in the near future, I would say “go to Venezuela.” Venezuela is living in an unparalleled moment. Maybe everything will fall apart in three years, maybe they'll find the solution to a better world, we don't know. Perhaps Mr Chávez, a man who has shown interesting flexibility for the moment, will become a dictator, perhaps a great man, I do not know. The history of man is full of bad examples, perhaps Venezuela will fall into the same trap. Well, maybe not. This is exciting. A revolution is being invented every day in Venezuela.

More difficult proof now: paint Colombia.

Colombia is such a politically complicated country! I’ve spent a lot of time there, it’s one of the most popular villages in South America, but politically I don’t even understand it. And I don’t think many Colombians understand it either. In a way, coming to closer territories, I don’t understand anything that happens in the Basque Country either, such a trap has been set up, nobody understands anything, and the violence is still there because of inertia and interests, neither one of us tells us the truth... And just as I don’t understand the politics of the Basque Country, I don’t understand Colombia. So I have no affinity for the FARC. The opposite happens with the Zapatistas, if the EZLN asked me one day “Manu, you have to come to the mountain with us”, yes, I would take everything and go to the mountain because they spread the model. If the FARC asked me, “Why? Explain to me first what was going on when you had it, because I don’t understand anything,” I would reply. “I have the version of the paramilitaries clearly, I know very well why and for what they are, they are the Kazikes’ thugs. But what are you? It’s not dark or light.” The only thing that is clear to me is that the people who live in the villages there, in the midst of the shootings, do not deserve this. They are so good, so generous, “you are too good for this world – I wanted to say it when we went with Mano Negra – get harder, even with me, this world is not made for people like you.”

You write simple words to an increasingly complicated world.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Complication has always been the enemy of harmony, and for me harmony is one of the most beautiful words. And his enemy is a complication. But well, it’s not always like that, because nature is the greatest harmony in the world, and nature is the most complicated.

And you defend recycling through music.

Of course, this is one of our mottos: recycling or death. Everyone wants everything, but the planet can’t give more, one day everyone will have to learn to lower the pretensions, otherwise it’s over. The day that all Chinese will want to live like us, this planet has done it, we all know that.

We're going to the moon.

How has the problem of overpopulation always been solved in human history? With the immigration. So the next immigration will be planets. And if man does not massively find a way to emigrate to other planets, we will explode, we will be finished.

But who are we, what are we?

We are a wound in nature. Human civilization is a wonderful creation of nature, but at the same time there is no doubt that it is a collective suicide. And one day nature will send us to shit because of the pain we're doing to her. And the problem is not him, the problem is us. We all say that we are hurting nature, but we are wrong, nature is much stronger than that. We're doing the pain to Geron's head. Will the Amazon disappear? But who will die? It's about us. Not the nature. In nature, in two hundred thousand years another Amazon will come out, quietly. And for him two hundred thousand years is nothing, just like going for a coffee for us.

And would you like to offer a concert on the moon?

Well, why not? But for now I live on another moon. For now I prefer to go to a concert in Bilbao one day, such as Semana Grande. You don’t have to go that far for a great concert.