Out of their heads
Guerrillas outside, stowaways inside and hash cake for Christmas … Duncan Campbell on what happened when musician Manu Chao took his own train through Colombia
Anyone seen dad? … Manu Chao and the train; his journalist father came along to chronicle the trip. Photograph: Youri Lenquette
Few musicians would allow a journalist to accompany their band through one of the world’s most dangerous countries. Even fewer, one suspects, would be happy about that journalist being their father. But Manu Chao is not just any musician, and his father, Ramón, a critic for le Monde Diplomatique, is not just any journalist – so perhaps it should surprise no one that they ended up together on a legendary 1993 tour of Colombia by train, carrying not just musicians, acrobats and tattooists, but a fire-breathing dragon and an ice museum as well.
Ramón’s account of that journey, The Train of Ice and Fire, is published in English next month. For Manu’s growing army of admirers, the book provides a magical-realist insight into how his music has developed.