On Monday night in Havana, Fidel Castro reportedly lay in a hospital bed, convalescent from belly anaplasty and accustomed the weight of the anarchy on his amateur as his nation captivated its breath. Twelve hundred afar away, in Brooklyn, his brainy battles were angrily actuality waged.
On the Prospect Park Bandshell date that evening, a French-Spanish charlatan artist continuing beneath a Zapatista banderole chanted “Cuba! Cuba! Cuba! Cuba!” into a microphone, to the roaring approval of the army afore him. Aloof 200 yards away, a backpack of capitalists awash tickets for abounding multiples of their aboriginal price, pocketing the surplus amount at the amount of the proletariat.
In the airless atramentous humidity, it was aback acceptable bright that if accelerating America has an basal crisis, it is this: not abundant Manu Chao tickets to go around.
I aboriginal heard Jose-Manuel Thomas Arthur Chao bristles years ago, while active in Mexico City, where, like best of Latin America, he is a hero to an alarming swath of adolescent bodies of differing amusing status. His Afro-Latin-ska-reggae complete is massively popular, and if headlining Lollapalooza in Chicago aftermost anniversary is any indication, he’s accepting big in the U.S., too. Thanks to his articulate backroom (“Say no to the White House terrorist!” is a archetypal quip), Mr. Chao additionally stands for the downtrodden’s acrimony at a apple that, as he is addicted of saying, “go crazy.”
Just how crazy went the apple arch up to Monday night’s sold-out show? Craigslist gave an aboriginal indication. Manhattan’s Elan Akerman, a self-described “music-industry guy,” auspiciously traded an added admission for a date with a babe he had never met before, based on the belief that she be “fun, beautiful and charge adulation Manu Chao” and that she accommodate a photograph for review. Mr. Akerman accustomed three accurate responses, pics and all, afterwards a hitch, from which he adopted one advantageous girl. (A few canicule earlier, an alien adolescent woman offered “head for Manu Chao ticket,” additionally on Craigslist, although there has been no chat on whether she had a taker.)
But alike added go-crazy was the accustomed analytic of ticket-for-cash exchanges. Priced at $25—$33 including Ticketmaster’s rather capitalistic fees—tix for Manu Chao’s aboriginal New York appearance in bristles years were affairs agilely at $100 and alike $150 on Craigslist. Attention caught, I skipped beyond the cyberscape to a altered agency of production, eBay, area I apparent that one admission had awash for $177.50.
This is a analytical moment, I thought; such prices are absolutely the array of article Manu’s admirers will not put up with. Anarchy seemed affectionate of nigh.
I was right. “You bodies scalping tickets to the Manu Chao shows for added than face amount SUCK,” one column read, tacking on “Viva Castro! Viva Chavez! Viva Evo Morales! Viva Lula! Viva la Gente!” to bang the point home. Fact is, addition column explained, “Manu Chao is adjoin GREED.” Scalping tickets ability be O.K. in some situations, a third affronted prole wrote, but “this is Manu Chao, not Madonna or the Rolling Stones for God’s sake.”
Any advantageous anarchy has its counterrevolution. Giddily, I watched Adam Smith’s bottom soldiers billow back. “Put on your Che Guevara T-shirts and accept to Chao in your iPod on the way to your job at Starbucks,” appropriate one bourgeois, the contrarily bearding Mr. or Ms. sale-188523357@craigslist.org. “Your internet affiliation and your computer may absolutely accept been awash to you by capitalists as well,” added another, answer that Manu Chao concerts are absolutely aloof one big “capitalist extravaganza.”
This, comrades, smelled a lot like what Uncle Karl would alarm an originary moment. So afterwards assignment on Monday night, I raced on my bike as fast as I could beyond the Manhattan Bridge, up Flatbush and bottomward Prospect Park West, accession aloof in time for a snoutful of the acid odor of praxis. The arena was like a bashed anniversary mixer for the accouchement of assembly to the United Nations, or maybe a apish Apple Cup condoning round: Germans, Ecuadorians, Brits, Spaniards, Trinidadians—all the planet, presente!
I chatted with a Mexican, Juan Carlos Moreno, as we watched an earlier Mexican attic tickets for $80 apiece to a accumulation of three adolescent Mexicans, who protested weakly, again paid. “Manu Chao is Manu Chao, sure, but that’s aloof too expensive,” Mr. Moreno said, abacus that he’d apparent the six-man bandage comedy Mexico City in March, aloof canicule afore he illegally beyond the Rio Grande to assignment carrying aliment for a Brooklyn restaurant. “That appearance was better. It was free.”
Standing beneath the cairn to Lafayette (hero of two revolutions), an Italian brace dressed in atramentous on black, abbreviate and anemic and adorable wan, captivated up annoyed fingers, acquisitive for what Deadheads would accept alleged a “miracle.” Near them, some women from Brazil addled similar, somewhat added hopeful-looking poses afore they were pounced on by a scalper ambitious $100 per. An adorable French girl, who lives in Chelsea and had analogous argent sandals and bag, pulled me aside. “I accept to abide cogent myself I don’t abhorrence the American race,” she said. “But this? This is disgusting. I adopt to be with the absolute underground on the grass.”
I angry to attending at the grass in question. And there they were. By the hundreds, the thousands, advance on the park’s grass and staring at the amiss ancillary of a 10-foot-tall bank amid them from the bandshell: the poor and downtrodden. What a absurd image! In this corner, the awash masses. In that corner, an anesthetic wall. The alone affair missing was an 8-year-old chase ambit or two, Charles Dickens, and the apologue would be complete.
This accurate articulation of the proletariat continued aback about 50 yards from the wall, on the far ancillary of the city bike path. The bodies seemed ill-equipped for revolt, armed alone with blankets and amoebic candy bought at the Park Slope Aliment Co-op, but a aegis bouncer in a chicken nylon slicker, aptitude up adjoin the arty cyclone fence, looked decidedly uneasy. “If they bum-rush, there’s activity to be a lot of shooting,” he said, eyes darting from ancillary to side. “There are a lot of cops on the added ancillary of the fence.”
Christy Hayner, a painter active in Windsor Terrace, was amid a allocation of the masses awkward into a atom of aerial arena where, if they awash at aloof the appropriate angle, the bend of the date could almost, barely, be apparent over the wall. She craned her close with admirable grit. “They don’t usually accept this bank for shows here,” she said mournfully. “But if you can still apprehend the music, again I assumption it’s not that bad.” Grim words—very Newcastle atramentous miner—but the affectionate of affair that brings out the adherence in a man.
At that moment, an apparent French-Spanish articulation rung out from within. The concert had started, and anybody rose to their feet. Plucking my anxiously attentive admission from my wallet, I larboard my brothers to their hammers and sickles, adventurous against Manu Chao.
“No war!” shouted Manu.
“No war!” I shouted back, and went in.
Ken Bensinger is a biographer in New York.
