If someone grows up in Switzerland, his father comes from Honduras, he learns to play flamenco on the guitar in his youth, later discovers jazz and records a new album in Paris in which he tries to capture his own family history, in particular his grandfather’s anti-imperialist fight against the all-powerful United Fruit Company, in music, then at least a considerable part of the influences of DOLCE VITA are covered.
But Louis Matute’s biography does not fully explain the entire complex undertaking that the Geneva musician’s new album represents. Born in 1993, Matute and his accompanying band, the Franco-Swiss Large Ensemble, sail through Latin America, dock in the deep south of the USA, they get bogged down in a smoky jazz cellar, stroll along the beach in Ipanema or lose themselves in the endless softness of a yacht rock cliché, until their own pathos sometimes catches up with them.
One has the feeling that Matute doesn’t always know exactly where the journey is supposed to go or whether everyone has already arrived where they want to go. It’s complicated, most of the pieces are instrumentals, including “Santa Marta”, which, without any lyrics, tells very vividly about the so-called “Banana Massacre” of 1928, when a strike by agricultural workers was brutally suppressed with up to 2,000 victims. The music, and one cannot expect much more, carries the historical burden with great dignity.
This review appears in Musikexpress 1/2026.