Pop Music

‘El mundo es un asco.”

Manu Chao spits out the words slowly and deliberately, a sad, defiant smile on his face.

‘El mundo es un asco,” he says. “The world is a disgusting place.”

The statement comes out spontaneously, during a lazy afternoon in the empty patio of a West Hollywood cafe, while the singer talks about the state of the world, his nomadic lifestyle and his new record.

Chao, 39, has the experience to support his criticism. He has spent the better part of the past five years traveling around the globe writing and recording music, his itinerary betraying a particular weakness for the most remote, inhospitable regions of the Third World.

‘When you travel and see the poverty that most people live in, you are possessed by this overwhelming feeling of rage,” he says. “Then, this internal struggle takes place, the moment when you decide to take that rage and channel it into something positive, like music.”

That’s exactly what the singer has done on “Proxima Estacion: Esperanza,” his second solo album and one of the most anticipated records of the year in the Latin music community. Virgin is releasing the collection June 5.

Listeners who are new to Chao’s subversive aesthetic will discover a highly personal universe that sounds like the aural equivalent of a Fellini movie by way of Tijuana (one of his favorite places), Barcelona (the city where he now lives) and the suburbs of Paris (the working-class environment in which he grew up).

Chao’s music is defined by the proliferation of sound effects (most of them culled from Latin radio stations), a collage of languages (he sings in English, French and Spanish) and sweet, ripe melodies that reveal an underlying touch of melancholic regret. But Chao is much more than a recording artist. He has forged a reputation as a visionary entrepreneur, dreaming up a series of highly improbable and logistically nightmarish projects--and then making them reality.

In the mid-’90s, Chao single-handedly resurrected an abandoned Colombian railroad track and toured the South American country, bringing a circus of sorts to every little village on his route. He remembers warmly that Colombia’s civil war would come to a brief halt wherever his train made a stop.

But a similar trek through West Africa, which Chao hoped would materialize in 1999, was scrapped due to financial difficulties.

‘We couldn’t find ‘clean’ money to do a tour like that,” he says. “We weren’t really happy with the people who came forth to finance it. The French government also offered to contribute, but that’s the dirtiest money in all of Africa,” he adds, referring to the nation’s colonist past. “What France did to Africa is simply unspeakable.”

Chao has now replaced his train idea with a new vision: to tour Europe in the summer with his new band, Radio Bemba (not to be confused with a Los Angeles group of the same name), and use the proceeds from those shows to rent a couple of vans and do a series of gigs in various African countries.

‘We can perform in the marketplaces,” he says enthusiastically. “Anywhere they let us play. We’re gonna play for free.”

Manu Chao’s career began in the ‘80s when he became the leader of Mano Negra, a seminal group in the development of rock en espanol.

Following in the footsteps of Chao’s favorite band, the Clash, Mano Negra fused reggae with rock, punk and Latin rhythms, complementing its stirring musical cocktail with intelligent lyrics that reflected a radical, socially alert political ideology. The band broke up in 1995.

In 1998, Chao released “Clandestino,” his first solo outing. Recorded on five continents in a portable studio and boasting a carnival-like, dance-until-the-end-of-the-world feel, the album became an international sensation, selling more than 2.2 million units worldwide and becoming the record to listen to for hip, young professionals in Western Europe and South America.

In the United States, the album touched a different demographic group. Rock en espanol fans embraced “Clandestino” as a cult item, recognizing Chao as one of the genre’s true visionaries.

‘Proxima Estacion: Esperanza,” which translates as “Next Stop: Hope,” contains obvious parallels with its predecessor. In fact, one of the songs, the Bob Marley-inspired “Mr. Bobby,” begins with the same hook as “Bongo Bong,” ’Clandestino’s” hit single.

‘I can’t really talk of any marked differences between the two records, except for the fact that we’ve added a horn section on this one,” the singer says. “I used the same techniques and the same people on both. Some of the same samples. “

But those who might accuse Chao of copying himself would be missing the point.

So exciting is Chao’s radical take on popular music, so refreshing and inspiring are his mixture of styles and nonstop barrage of ideas, that everything seems new, even on a return to the same path. The motifs are the same, but they are far from sounding tired.

To Chao, the key to understanding this album lies in its title--and especially the word “hope.”

‘The only people who really understand the concept of hope are those who live in the poorest places of the world,” he says. “To them, hope is not an abstract concept. Hope is a plate of warm food, it’s an everyday thing. And you can learn a lot from that.”