![]() It’s strictly personal, and that extends to the groups I’ll discuss here-you make your own connections based on what you like and what you’ve been able to hear. The cauldron bubbles under and over with rock, reggae, dub, punk, ska, James Brown funk, ragga, rai, Latin, hip-hop, techno-to be adapted in distinctly individual and constantly shifting proportions. Listen globally, but flavor locally with differing doses of common spices-depending on what you like, who you are, and what’s going on around you. The best metaphor for the Mediterranean mix may come from post-tropicalia Brazil-Chico Science and Naçao Zumbi’s satellite dish in a mangrove-swamp mangue-beat logo. Born in the era when Jamaican riddims anchored the international youth music underground, one crucial element is a rhythmic vitality largely missing from U.S. Strongly anti-racist, internationalist, and pro-immigrant, it’s the soundtrack for urban youth living on the Euro-immigration, anti-globalization front line. It’s been called mestizaje after Mano Negra’s hell-for-leather patchanka charge, but many reject that as too limiting a title for a far-from-monolithic phenomenon. What goes on musically in France, Spain, and Italy passes undetected on the radar screen of the dominant U.S.-Anglo pop world, short of a freak trend breakout à la Paris house or Daft Punk/Air pop. Manu Chao may be an anomalous ripple breaking the surface of the Anglo music world, but the Energizer Bunny skankster is riding the crest of a wave that’s been developing for more than a decade in southern Europe-not that anyone outside the Mediterranean rim really got a chance to hear it grow. ![]()
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