Mano Solo

Mano Solo (2007)

Mano Solo (born: Emmanuel Cabut ; born April 24, 1963 in Châlons-sur-Marne , † January 10, 2010 in Paris ) was a French singer.

biography

The son of comic artist and caricaturist Jean Cabut (1938–2015) and Isabelle Monin, co-founder of La Gueule Ouverte magazine , Mano Solo grew up in a left-wing, intellectual and politicized environment in Ozoir-la-Ferrière near Paris. His youth were marked by drug use and repeated delinquency. At the age of 17 he was a guitarist in the punk rock band Les Chihuahuas . In addition to music, painting in particular was his means of artistic expression in the 1980s. His paintings bore the pseudonym Boredom, alluding to a Sex Pistols song . In 1982 he worked as a roadie at the Zenith de Paris . As a painter, he brought it to some publications, including in Les Nouvelles Littéraires . Between 1986 and 1988 he published the fanzine La marmaille Nue .

At the beginning of the 90s, however, his focus shifted in favor of music. From then on he stood on the stage as an interpreter of his own texts, often in the Théâtre du Tourtour in the heart of Paris, the city that set the scene for his stories in many songs. His musical role models included David Bowie , Iggy Pop , Jacques Higelin and Tom Waits .

His breakthrough came in 1993 with his first album La Marmaille Nue , which received gold status with over 100,000 sales in the first year. Critics hailed the album as a "violent outburst of painful words". Musically between jazz manouche , rock and musette , it was characterized not only by poetic texts but also by the vocal expressiveness of the singer. Mano Solo sang about drugs, street violence and crime ( À quinze ans du matin ). There he also spoke disarmingly openly ( Pas du gâteau ) about his HIV infection, which had existed since the mid-1980s .

The role of illness in his work has since formed a controversy between the militant artist and media reception. Mano Solo had repeatedly resisted interpretations that tried to reduce his songs and his person to his AIDS disease: “I no longer want to talk to the whole world about my state of health. I'm pissed off ... I'm not going to sell my health ... AIDS is not my whole life. I'm still human, not an AIDSian. I can break out of this role from time to time. [...] I am not a fighter of THE cause. I sing about my life and AIDS is part of it, that's all. It's not my business, that's not what I want to sell. "

In 1995 the second album Les années sombres was released . His mood was darker than that of the previous album; Mano Solo sang a dark universe full of loneliness, sadness and restlessness, over which hangs the inevitability of death. ( Dis-moi , À pas de géant ). During a concert at Bataclan , Mano Solo briefed the audience about the outbreak of his AIDS disease: “I have two pieces of news, one good and one bad. The good thing is: I'm no longer seropositive. The bad thing is: I have AIDS. ”In dealing aggressively with AIDS as part of the reality of his life, Mano Solo was concerned with his individual case. He did not see himself as the mouthpiece of a minority: “I want to make it clear that I never wanted to speak on behalf of anyone with AIDS. I've only ever talked about how I dealt with the disease. Everyone with illness deals with it differently. ”Even if this was a personal confession, for Mano Solo it nonetheless had a political dimension in that it opposed the exclusion of AIDS sufferers.

The media picked up the disease to characterize the singer. He was now a recognized artist with a solid fan base. Musically, his spectrum had expanded to include tango and African rhythms. The record was a commercial success with 150,000 copies sold.

In 1996 Mano Solo reunited with his old band Les Chihuahuas for the album Les Frères Misère . It was all about political punk rock. The songs were about unemployment, political accountability and racism. The reunification was a temporary enterprise. In October 1996 they performed together in the Bataclan.

With the money from the record sales Mano Solo founded his own publishing house, which he also named La Marmaille Nue . The volume of poetry Je suis là was published there in 1995 and the novel Joseph sous la pluie the following year .

In 1997 his third solo album Je ne sais pas trop was released . It was largely a live album, recorded during a concert at L'Eldorado in Paris and also went gold. In addition to his childhood, loneliness and love, death, against which a desperate will to live rebels, continued to be thematically omnipresent. As with all of his records, he designed the cover himself.

Two years later the double live album Internationale Shalala was released , recorded at the Théâtre du Tourtour . With only two guitars (Mano Solo supported by Jean-Louis Solans) it was a return to simplicity. Except for the final Sha La La , the pieces came from the previous albums.

The album Dehors (2000) marked a turning point in Mano Solo's oeuvre. Musically a "disque de voyage" that combined reggae with salsa, jazz and rock sounds, it stood out above all in terms of text from the previous works. The mood was generally more positive, more hopeful and more towards the world, which was emblematic in the song Je taille ma route . Before the confrontation with one's own mortality was a main motif of his songs, a new will to live was expressed in this album.

At the end of 2002 the live album La Marche was released , which was recorded during his Dehors tour in Clermont-Ferrand and Toulouse and accordingly mainly contained songs from this album. A DVD with photos, concert recordings and animations was attached to the album.

Les animals was published in September 2004 . It contained some pieces that Mano Solo had originally written for the singer Juliette Gréco . Paris was also still very present ( Paris avance and together with Les Têtes Raides Botzaris ). Despite the continued commitment to social issues and emotional depth, the singer left a more distant impression than before.

In 2006 Mano Solo did not renew the contract with his previous record company Warner . He then produced and marketed his next album In The Garden (March 2007) himself. On his website, he offered his fans the possibility of promoting the album by purchasing it in advance. In return, the supporter received exclusive video and song material in addition to the album. With this approach, the artist wanted to try out an alternative to the major labels , but without supporting the free policy of the Internet. At the end of this experiment there were 2,800 pre-sales and a total of 35,000 albums sold, enough to refinance the production, but too little to finance the next album. Mano Solo drew the conclusion from this that there is currently no alternative to the majors and that exchanging music over the Internet is more of a disadvantage than good for the musical diversity. In this sense, Mano Solo declared in April 2008 that he was living proof that in-house production could not work.

In September 2009 his last album Rentrer au port (Wagram) was released.

Mano Solo died on January 10, 2010, at the age of 46, of recurrent aneurysms as a result of AIDS . He is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .

Tombstone Mano Solo

Discography

• La Marmaille new (1993)
• Les Années sombres (1995)
• Frères misère (1996), with Les Frères misère
• Je sais pas trop (1997)
• International Shalala (1999)
• Dehors (2000)
• La Marche (2002)
• Les Animals (2004)
• In the garden (2007)
• Hors Série (2008)
• Rentrer Au Port (2009)

Web links

Commons : Mano Solo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography at Radio France Internationale .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mano Solo ... de A à Z , in: Guitar Part , nov. 2000
2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : "An explosion de mots douloureux et violents" 
3. ↑ Mano Solo, À mort la mort! article - 20 juillet 2000 ( http://www.voir.ca/publishing/article.aspx?zone=1§ion=6&article=8051 ): «Mais maintenant, je n'ai plus envie de parler de mon bilan de santé à tout le monde. C'est casse-couilles à la fin ... Je ne suis pas en train de vendre mon bilan de santé ... Ce n'est pas ma vie, le Sida. Je suis un être humain, je ne suis pas un sidéen. J'ai le droit d'en sortir de temps en temps. [...] Je ne suis pas un militant de LA cause; je suis juste un chanteur réaliste et le Sida faisait partie de ma réalité, voilà tout. Ce n'est pas mon fonds de commerce, ce n'est pas ce que j'ai envie de vendre. "
4. ↑ ( Archived copy ( Memento of the original from January 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ): «J'ai deux nouvelles, une bonne et une mauvaise. La bonne, c'est que je ne suis plus séropositif. La mauvaise, c'est que j'ai le sida! " 
5. ↑ Mano Solo, Un volet s'ouvre et laisse entrer un peu de soleil , 23 janvier 1997 (Nouvel Observateur), http://lemegalodon.net/a8739-le-temoignage-de-mano-solo-un-volet-s -ou.html  : «Mais je voudrais préciser que je n'ai jamais voulu parler au nom des sidéens. J'ai toujours parlé d'un sida: le mien. Il ya autant de façons de vivre le sida que de personnes qui l'ont. "
6. ↑ Mano Solo, Un volet s'ouvre et laisse entrer un peu de soleil , 23 janvier 1997 (Nouvel Observateur), http://lemegalodon.net/a8739-le-temoignage-de-mano-solo-un-volet-s -ou.html  : «Revendiquer ton sida, était-ce un acte militant? Mano Solo: Oui. Ne pas me laisser écraser par la société, c'était déjà un acte militant. Quand j'ai su que j'avais le sida, Le Pen parlait encore de sidatorium. "
7. ↑ Louis-Jean Calvet, L'ange noir des nuits blanches , in: Le francais dans le monde, jan. 1996: “La drogue, les piqûres, le sida. Mano Solo se retrouve face à son destin: une mort program, certaine, attendue. Face à cette fin annoncée, il prend sa guitare, écrit, chante, comme pour faire un bras d'honneur à la mort. "
8. ↑ Mano Solo, À mort la mort! article - 20 juillet 2000 ( http://www.voir.ca/publishing/article.aspx?zone=1§ion=6&article=8051 ): «J'avais besoin de revenir à quelque chose de plus simple, parce qu'on attrape Facilement la great tête avec des productions sophistiquées. Pour l'album d'avant, j'avais dix violons, deux violoncelles, deux contrebasses ... Tu finis par croire que t'es fantastique et que c'est toi qui as tout généré, alors que c'est tout le monde qui t'a aidé à y arriver. »
9. ↑ Mano Solo, À mort la mort! article - 20 juillet 2000 ( http://www.voir.ca/publishing/article.aspx?zone=1§ion=6&article=8051 )
10. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ↑ MANO SOLO
13. ↑ Loin de l'industrie du disque, Mano Solo tente un pari sur internet; AFP; 11 octobre 2006 ([pdf] article en ligne [archive] [archive])
14. ↑ Le gratuit c'est la fin de la diversité et de l'avant garde. Mano Solo in: http://eco.rue89.com/2009/08/26/free-pourquoi-leconomie-de-demain-sera-gratuite-0?page=4#comment-1026185  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
15. ↑ Mano Solo in: T'es pas tout seul , Le Soir, 15 avril 2008; AFP; 29 avril 2009 (www.lesoir.be [archive] [archive], consulté le 15/04/2009): “L'autoproduction, ça ne peut pas marcher. [...] Je suis la preuve vivante qu'on ne peut pas se passer des majors. J'en ai marre de ces médias qui n'arrêtent pas de cracher sur elles. Sans Warner, Mano Solo n'existerait pas. Ces firmes, ce ne sont pas des mécènes, elles sont là pour se faire du blé. C'est normal que ces gens te jettent si tu n'es plus compétent à leurs yeux. Pourquoi devraient-ils garder ceux qui ne vendent plus? Ceux qui ne rencontrent pas leur public doivent dégager, c'est tout. Il y en a marre de ces considérations. La presse est complice de ça. Il faut arrêter de se leurrer: oui, le piratage nuit à la diversité et Myspace, c'est pathétique, ça fait peur, ce n'est pas là qu'on trouve l'avant-garde. Et personne en France n'a été révélé grâce à ça. Le MP3, ce n'est pas faire la révolution, c'est fabriquer des chômeurs. "
16. ↑ Le chanteur français Mano Solo est mort dimanche à 46 ans , AFP, 10 January 2010