Manu Chao and Calypso Rose have released an updated version of “Clandestino”, Chao’s cult song from 1998. “Clandestino” talks about illegal immigrants, dots at sea, ghosts in the city, lost and without papers. Calypso Rose now sings about the shipwrecked on the way to “the land in front don’t want me, the land behind me burns”. Calypso Rose says: “Everything I see on TV makes me want to cry. These things should not happen in the 21st century. “
An animated music video made by Wise Bird studio accompanies this new single. The vibrant video shows the need to “value everything that ‘the clandestine’ can contribute. It is not a simple shadow that society does not want to see.”
Manu Chao met Calypso Rose at the Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago in 2015. “He came to my hotel in sneakers, shorts and with a small old guitar,” says Rose. Manu captivated her and they spent hours playing and singing. “If Manu did not have a partner, I would be happy to be Mrs. Chao.”
Both artists understood each other so well from the first moment that they decided to work together on “Far From Home“, Calypso Rose’s album released in 2016 on Because Music. This irresistible mix of traditional and modern calypso, soca, reggae tints and the characteristic guitar of Manu Chao, is the biggest international sales success in Rose’s 60-year career. Her subsequent album “So Calypso” (2018), also released by Because Music, has served to consolidate Calypso Rose’s international audience. As proof of this, at 78, Calypso Rose became the most elderly artist to perform at the latest edition of the Coachella festival.
The new version of “Clandestino” is available for free at Mau Chao’s website.
Author: World Music Central News Room
World music news from the editors at World Music Central