When this single was released in 1979, at the age of 15, I was of course far too old to seriously listen to Boney M. I only really liked “Daddy Cool,” their big breakthrough, but that was three years earlier and I was only twelve.
As a little hippie, I only heard the Latin American-flavored hit ballad “El Lute” in passing and suspected that the title character could be an old Aztec king or a Mexican operetta revolutionary. In fact, it was more or less as if the Amigos or DJ Ötzi were singing a hymn to Edward Snowden today – an idea that is as grandiose as it is absurd.
Boney M. sang about a crook with “El Lute”.
Because when the record was released, El Lute was anything but a dead legend, namely a lively folk hero, supposedly a kind of Spanish Robin Hood. When Boney M. (and later Michael Holm) sang about the escape king and crook, he was not yet 40 years old, was in Spanish prison at the end of the Franco years and was acquitted in 1981, after having even been sentenced to death in the meantime.
The extremely exciting content of “El Lute” only became clear to me later, and one wonders how many German tourists to Spain were even aware of this fact at the time.
Musically, the song doesn’t get any better, but Frank Farian, despite all his light melodies for millions, also had an interesting penchant for writing songs about outsiders – “Ma Baker”, “Rasputin”, even “Rivers Of Babylon” As an old ska song, it is at least tastefully chosen in terms of politics and spirituality, even if it is not executed accordingly – it has something likeable about it, something that pop stars could still score points with in the 70s.
Unfortunately, any move in this direction would be completely unthinkable today.
Read more: The best German songs of all time