Mano Negra – Señor Matanza

I spent the end of the 1980s working for restaurants and night clubs, during which time I gained a real distaste for “club” or “dance” records, partially because the music did not interest me (repetitive loops of electronically generated sounds still don’t appeal to me very much), but mostly because I had to listen to the same records over and over several nights per week.

I was a rocker through and through. Anything else I listened to was of common roots: blues, funk, soul, jazz, country, and folk. There was no disco in my library. Whether simple or complex, I craved music with mojo, something with feeling, and electronic or computer generated music was the exact opposite. As far as I was concerned, it represented the death of human culture – it was death, and I hated it.

At the time, electronic music was the new underground, and house was the moniker of the day, riding in on the wave of disco from the late 1970s. Despite my disdain for synth-beats, sequencers, and drum machines, I do recall liking Kraftwerk, perhaps due to its use of analog synths like the Moog, and its use of melody, harmony, and more classically styled arrangements.

Now electronic music has branched off into dozens of sub-genres but what I hear still sounds like disco to me. Techno, electro, dance, trance, you can add all the subtleties you want to an electronically configured can of sound, you can even increase the beats per minute to an utterly inhuman pace, but if it’s riding over a continuous 4/4 beat, it’s still disco to me.

Twenty years has past and a lot has changed in music and myself. The genre-busting continues, and I’ve mellowed out somewhat to the world of electronic music – after all, rock and roll was based entirely on electronic amplification.

As I’ve returned to collecting vinyl records over the last few years I have come across large collections of 12″ dance club records that have been dumped into second-hand stores by DJ’s carrying what now amounts to dated music. By and large I have avoided these records because I have little interest and even less knowledge. In almost every other genre of recorded music I have pretty good instincts. I can pick up a record and with a cursory examination I am confident as to whether or not I wish to add it to my library. When it comes to dance club records, I haven’t got a clue.

But I am taking some chances. I have picked up some excellent underground hip-hop this way – some really clever and dark political recordings that the kids refer to as “old school” or from “back in the day”.

I also have a thing for foreign records, and so in my limited posts of dance club records, this is what you are most likely to hear: Spanish techno, French dancehall, and re-mixes of 1960s Euro-psychadelia.

Señor Matanza by Mano Negra incorporates the best of organic music (a recognizable traditional rhythm) with the hypnotic elements of electronic dance music (dub effects and samples of Spanish broadcast clips).

AMG Biography by Jason Ankeny: [edited]

Named in honor of an Andalucian anarchist group, Mano Negra (The Black Hand) emerged from the same Parisian artists’ scene, drawing equal influence from the punk ethos of the Clash and the multitude of sounds and rhythms endemic to the global music community. Formed in 1986 from the remnants of the neo-rockabilly unit the Hot Pants, Mano Negra essentially consisted of vocalist Manu Chao, his trumpeter brother Tonio and drummer cousin Santiago Casiriego, Spanish natives who fused rock, rap, flamenco and rai to create a heady brew they dubbed “Patchanka,” a name derived from a Spanish pejorative for dancehall music.

In 1992 they embarked on the “Cargo Tour,” travelling to a series of port cities to perform on a stage built into their ship’s hold. Returning the following year, they journeyed by rail from Colombia’s Caribbean coast to the capital city of Bogotá, giving free concerts at stations en route. Latin influences dominated 1994’s Casa Babylon, which proved to be the group’s final record.