Disappeared from the musical sphere for decades to such an extent that some believed him dead, the singer Malan Mané, one of the voices of the people of Guinea-Bissau within the group Super Mama Djombo, will give his first concert in France on Saturday in thirty year.
To discover
The Nutcracker,
considered racist, will he survive the era of "cancel culture?"
The Big ones
.
This novel by Sylvain Prudhomme, published in 2014, is at the origin of the resurrection of the musician, whose voice was silent in 1990. “
I was in Ziguinchor
”, in Casamance in Senegal, near Guinea-Bissau , tells AFP the writer.
“
Pretty quickly, I fell in love with Super Mama records.
The idea for the novel came from meeting several former members of the group living in Casamance, including Serifo Banora,
”he continues.
Read also Sylvain Prudhomme, winner of the Porte Dorée literary prize
“
The book was nourished by the atmosphere of concerts and everything I felt there
”.
And memories of Malan Mané, whom Sylvain Prudhomme will meet while writing his novel, in Montreuil, near Paris, where the former singer-leader of the group then lives in a workers' home.
"Go away"
"
I was not at all destined to become a singer, my dream was to become a footballer, at Benfica Lisbon,
" recalls Malan Mané, 65 years old today, whom AFP met. “
We had an association in the neighborhood, of which I was a member as a footballer,
” he recalls of his youth in Guinea-Bissau. Sometimes "
some people would start playing the guitar, me singing." One day, someone said to me + but why not form a group?
".
Birth of a vocation. After a first experience with other musicians, this son of a family of fishermen and farmers in the south joined Super Mama Djombo. This formation, which praises the revolution, becomes at independence, proclaimed in 1973 and recognized by Portugal a year later, the standard bearer of its country. “
After independence, we accompanied the president on his trips abroad. That's how we played in Angola, Senegal, Gambia
”. And in France, in 1981.
The reputation of the group crosses the borders, it records in Lisbon, engraves some songs always cult,
Dissan na Mbera
or
Sol maior para comandante
.
But the formation, with committed texts interpreted in Portuguese Creole against a background of gumbe, a local musical style influenced by Mandingo and rumba, will lose, following the coups d'état in a country torn by civil war, the favors of power. .
Not its popularity.
“
At each concert, it was full.
We saw things differently, we had revolutionary songs, we criticized
”.
“
There are always threats.
When you see a young man beaten up in the middle of the street because he made a criticism, sometimes you say to yourself “move away”,
”says Malan Mané.
"
Abandoned
"
He left his country in 1990 for France.
Beginning of a long tunnel.
"
I remained eight years without papers
", tells the one who moved from home to home in Valenton, Elbeuf then Montreuil in 2003, where he still lives.
“
It was resourcefulness.
I learned to use wallpaper
”by re-typing apartments, said this little man in somewhat hesitant French.
On his face, we sometimes guess a sadness that disappears as soon as he evokes the music.
Regularized in 1998, Malan Mané will exercise various low-skilled trades.
In 2008, another blow: an open heart operation.
By the grace of a book, the wheel of his misfortune seems to have finally stopped turning.
Since the novel's release, the news of its existence has spread to Guinea-Bissau, where it returned in 2019 for a song during an electoral rally. All this filmed. Because from the novel was born the idea of a documentary recounting his career, directed by Philippe Béziat, in the course of filming.
A novel, a documentary, the allocation of HLM housing, a concert, the upcoming recording in Lisbon of a disc with new songs ... everything seems to smile again for Malan Mané, who will be back on stage on Saturday as part of the Africolor festival in Montreuil, two former original members of Super Mama Djombo: percussionist Armando Vaz Pereira and guitarist Adriano Toundou Fonseca.
“
I missed music a lot, even making me sick
,” he blurted out, very moved.
"
I felt abandoned
"
