Lausanne: and the Dolce Vita comes back to life in a book

Celeste Cabrita wasn’t born when La Dolce Vita died. In 2000, the small Lausanne club, so famous that it was known far and wide, closed its doors due to lack of audience, artistic line and political will.

At this time, Edgar Cabrita had also closed his drawers. The young father exercised his musical passion on a daily basis in his job as a representative for RecRec, one of the most active independent Swiss distributors. He had nurtured her for years as a regular at the Dolce Vita, crazy about concerts that he captured with his camera. And then, time passed.

“It was on my way back from an evening at the Espace Autogéré (editor’s note: who occupies the premises of the former club) that I asked my father to tell me about the Dolce Vita, explains Celeste. He then went to look for his photos at the bottom of a box, a real Bronx. He thought they were worthless, I saw them as a treasure.”

The newly graduated graphic designer from the French-speaking School of Arts and Communication throws herself into these memories full of noise and fury, moments stolen from those Lausanne nights which saw the world cream of rock, punk and, in a small Vaudois club, pass by. from the beginning of the 90s, of a mix of urban groove. Rap, jazz fusion, funk, afrobeat, these genres make up the bulk of Edgar’s photographic stash and, consequently, the beautiful book born from the day after the party. Because there is a beautiful book!

By creating the work “La Dolce, deux regards” (varnished on Saturday), Celeste Cabrita, 24, pays homage to her father, to a legendary club that she did not know and to the music of which she shares love with his parents. “In the car, in the living room, everywhere, my father made me listen to music,” she remembers. Everything, rock, song, world, electro. Reggae was hard. But I came there in the end.”

Of Dolce, the young woman likes to imagine “the raw, liberating side, with musicians who – it shows – resembled their audience”. She regrets the lack of female presence. On 80 pages, the work only includes a few musicians, but it is a reflection of its time. “But if I could choose to go back in time to attend a book concert, it would be Madre Deus, probably because of my Portuguese roots on my father’s side.”

The latter, come on, would love to see Henry Rollins again, “one of the great rock concerts I saw at the Dolce, with that of the Red Hot Chili Peppers”. A big boost for a real youthful boost, the one that the music lover experienced by opening his memory to his daughter.

Francois Barras is a journalist in the cultural section. Since March 2000, he has been recounting current, past and perhaps future music.More informations

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