Thursday was Manu Chao at the Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires in Nuñez. If you're curious (aka if you're Jordan), the newspaper Clarin and hipsterblog vuenosairez have reviews of the concert in Spanish. Some basic thoughts:
He played for over three hours, with three encore style sequences. These often commenced and ended with Manu smacking himself with the microphone against his chest plate. It looked painful. He played literally almost everything in his catalog with many mash-ups of songs (as he frequently does on his albums). One of my favorites was mixing the clasic folklorico song Se Fuerza la Maquina with his own Luna y Sol. Many of the songs I hadn't heard, presumably from the 2007 Radio Bemba Sound System's La Radiolina were played much faster whereas many of the old songs took on a more reggae vibe and were slowed down. The GANJ was abundant -- I saw spliffs in all directions -- and the whole event took on a pretty leftist spin, with ample criticism of the States in the form of poetry from members of La Colifata, a radio collective run by inpatients and outpatients of a mental hospital in Buenos Aires, and general hating on Bush. (Obama wasn't lauded especially, though, either.)
All in all, I had an awesome time doing the reggae sway with the dreaded portenos for at least 2.75 of the over 3 hours of the show. I frequently have moments that remind me of the scene in Half Baked where they start listing all of the things that are better ON WEED. Here it's that some things are just that much cooler for experiencing them in Buenos Aires, Argentina, or a Spanish-speaking country generally. Seeing Manu Chao was definitely one of them.
Enjoy this pretty rough clip of the show from youtube.
Hey Shana, You sound like you are having a great time...I'm happy you are going with the flow that is all things non-Connecticut. And you seem surprised that someone would consider Obama to be a socialist--why are your parents spending all that money on an education? Love, Janet
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