Louis Matute

TRANSCRIPT

So, hello, my name is Louis Matute. I come from Switzerland and I grew up in Geneva and in Dulémont, a small city in the Jura. 

Both of my parents are not from Switzerland. My father is from Honduras, from Tegucigalpa, and my mother is from Stuttgart, Germany. I grew up basically in Switzerland with the Swiss culture and when I was a child my father didn't really like talk to me in Spanish and neither did my mother in German. I think from the side of my father it was because he wanted really to integrate himself into a society. As well, at first he didn't really pass on his culture. It came later, like strongly, but later. And my mother, she didn't like speak to us in German because her mom died when I was born, so it was hard for her to speak to us in German. 

So yeah, I grew up like as a Swiss guy, wondering how does it look like on the other side of the ocean and now I'm trying to find out all the things and figure out the story of my family.

Growing up as a Swiss child, Swiss people were really not when you were young, really proud of being Swiss. Like, it's not something that we tell to other people. When I was a child, I was only with children that emigrated, or the parents were emigrated, so I was always telling like, “Okay, I have Honduran roots.” So I was proud to say that I was half-Honduran. So I kind of was seeing myself as an Honduran even though I wasn't understanding it in a way.

I'm on a journey to find which part of Honduran is got in me.

So I think I really started to question myself, I would say like two or three years ago. But it was always in the background because I was always composing like music that has influences from South America, and I didn't really know why. So I did my first album, then my second, then my third. And after the third, I was like it's full of you know sounds of this area of the world. So why? Why am I, you know, carrying that?

Yeah, I grew up listening to some great musicians from South America and Central America, but I'm not like a specialist of story of this music. But I think I always felt like a kind of a nostalgia melancholy and sadness from my father's side. My father is a lovely father, we have a beautiful connection, but I always felt that he has a bit of a sadness in the heart. It's hard for him to manage some questions on an emotional level and I always like try to figure out why. And I think it's a lot connected with what he went through as a child. So I think I feel and I felt his sadness through the history of his family and the history of Honduras in general. So this kind of melancholic feeling taste I carry it on my music. 

And as a composer, I like to keep this kind of a, how do you say, naiveté, because when you're too much aware of things, styles, when you start to compose, then it can stop you. Yeah, so when I was hearing as a child all this music, for me it was just, yeah, there was it was not a style or a genre, it was just songs that was popping in my head. And so when I'm composing I have all these songs in my head and they all are mixing up with each other. And yeah, it's so funny, because like music is kind of really like it's a therapy, and it's really like, how do you say, un journal intime -- it's like a diary, you know.

And now I'm trying to figure out where does it come from. And so I think that's a bit the process.

Well, my father has a capacity or ability to hide his feelings and when it comes to talk about it, talk about those feelings, or those hard situations, or those hard experiences, it can be like related to the story of his family, of his country or the story with his children or my mother or stuff. It's really hard for him to – when we have to talk about that – then it's really hard and you can feel that it's really, really painful. So he tried to push that away and not talk about those subjects. I tried to question him about that, and I tried to question him about like how come he's not really talking about this kind of subject. But he's always like “It's like this, it's like that, but it's okay. It's not, you know, it's not relevant. It's not important for my history. It's not important for you to understand why I'm like this.” And for me, it's important. And I think for him too. Yeah.

So, like the other day, I was just thinking, I was like, okay, let's call Tio Nelson, my uncle, the brother of my father, and ask him questions about the family. So I called him, he's a great guy. He lives in Geneva, but we don't have a close relation And so I was having coffee and asking him questions about the family, and because in this moment I'm really like trying to figure out what happened in Tegucigalpa with this United Fruit Company -- you know, Chiquita banana So they really like destroyed every little amount of hope of democracy of all these countries in the 20th century. And in Tegucigalpa, they were really like trying to elect democratic people but at every moment of hope, the well... the Americans were giving money and guns to, well... to a small amount of people and they took the power and they installed a dictatorship, military dictatorship. And my grandfather was really close to a president who was elected by the people and had to get away because of that. And they threatened to kill him if he wasn't like okay to cooperate. So they killed his uncle – the uncle of my grandfather – and they shot like his entire house and they had to live like the day after this incident.

So all these stories I just I'm learning it now, and I'm learning it like how huge the role of my grandfather was because he was really like a militant and against the government and really defending the rights of the workers in the fields. So this is one thing. 

The other thing is that actually I haven't been to Honduras, like never, because my family then moved to Costa Rica. And so I went a lot to Costa Rica when I was a child, once a year, but I've never been to Tegucigalpa and I'm really wondering should I go there? But I don't want to go there without purpose, without just to see the country. I don't know. When I was visiting my family in Costa Rica, it was sometimes kind of weird, because they want to like do like the Americans does. Sso they have like American names, and they have American malls, and they have everything looks like the States. And so my family were a bit in this mindset. They wanted to look like occidental people. So I had a glimpse of that Latin American culture, but it was not a fully experienced Latin America experience.

So yeah, I had a bit like this sensation to be a tourist in this country, and I have the feeling that even my family wanted to be not Costa Rican. It's a shame.

I watched the documentary the other day on the United Food Company. And all I have heard from Honduras is that it's a dangerous country, that there are a lot of gangs and Mafia, and you don't want to go there. But then I watched this documentary on Tegucigalpa, and reading all the people from different countries from South America saying that Honduran people are hard workers, charming people, like just fantastic, open-minded people. And that it's really sad what happened to this country. It makes me cry, actually. So I'm I'm carrying some kind of – I don't know – yes, sadness in me regarding that. And I was always really sensitive about this subject, like before I even know that. Yeah 

So my father is, it's kind of weird because he's not trying to understand why I compose the music I compose. Like where does it come from? And when I'm talking about him like, “Okay, you realize you realize that I'm composing this music for a reason.” And he's like, "yeah." He's just happy about it and proud, but he doesn't try to understand why I compose this music. And it's the same thing when I ask him questions about story of my family. He's answering me, but he's not asking himself all these questions. I think my theory is because for him it's too painful to dig in these subjects. And for me, it's not because I wasn't the victim, I'm second generation.

The title of an album I produced was called Our Folklore and it's kind of the results of multiple attemptations trying to understand where I come from. Is it Switzerland? Is it Germany? Is it Honduras? And I think the impossibility of having an answer to that leads me to create, to accept that I have my own culture my own folklore. And my own folklore is designed also by the sound of the band by the music I create – I mean the music we create all together. And this is really like my cultural identity at the end. It's not Swiss. It's not German, It's not Hungarian. It's something else that doesn't have a name... and it's explained through music. And music, for that, is the best medium to explain this culture that doesn't have a name. 

So yeah, the the song that represents best the concept is called “Our Folklore,” clearly [laughs]. It's one of my favorite songs in the album, because it came out really naturally. This song, actually, you know, when you're a musician you compose a lot, some themes are easier to compose and other are not. And some melodies like come out naturally, like while you're under the shower, or in your bed, or walking the street, I don't know. And I remember clearly I was really, really sad one morning, and I took my guitar – and it's like really in the, like in in the movies, you know? I took my guitar and started to sing a song, and it was like I just, I was like “Oh I'm sad, but this is beautiful! Let's record it!” So I took my I took my iPhone and I recorded it. And the first take was perfect! And I almost prefer the take on my iPhone than the final version of the studio, because it was really like okay. Everything was there – like the structure, the melody, the mood, the feel. I mean it was the good take, and it's really lovely.

And I think it fits perfectly this concept of folklore, like navigating through melancholy, nostalgia sadness, and also beautiful melodies, well harmonized, and talking about this continent, I don't really know. But I really imagine it's like a fantasized myth of a country I only know by proxy. And I think this is what makes my music original and different. It's that I accept that and I just imagine how is it to be there, how the music sounds there, and I'm just like painting it through my music, with naivety. Yes. And I think what is really interesting here is that Our Folklore talks about where I see myself.

So it could be, like, that the name of this folklore is Louis Matute... Matute. [Laughs] Yes.