EVERY GENRE PROJECT - March 30 - Saeta
Genre of the Day - Saeta
Album of the Day - Saetas by Salako (1994)
March 30, 2024
Sometimes the timing of genres given to me on a particular day is so serendipitous it’s actually shocking. As of right now, there’s 2,269 genres on RYM that I randomize every day to find what I’m listening to for that day’s column. That means there’s a 0.04% chance of getting a particular genre any given day. Yet this Saturday of Easter weekend I get a genre that specifically pertains to Easter. I didn’t even know there was enough music about Easter to constitute an entire genre. There’s hymns, obviously, but there aren’t carols or popular standards. Easter just isn’t the type of juggernaut month-long extravaganza that Christmas is. But as a spring lover and someone who grew up a “CEO” (Christmas and Easter only Christian) with a botanically-inclined mother particularly fond of the holiday, I find this fact cool! So happy Easter to all those who celebrate.
We’ve covered a lot of religious genres this month, and it’s astounding how radically different musicians’ conceptions of what constitutes the divine and properly exalts religious figures. Today we get Andalusia’s, the southern region of Spain that became synonymous with flamenco, emotional take on praising Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Hidden beneath that evidently Christian exterior is Spain’s multireligious past. Saeta’s musical origins originally lie in 16th century Jewish religious songs, before the Jewish population of Spain was stamped out by the brutal Inquisition. To my ears, the saetas also bear a striking resemblance to the vocal fire of the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, indicating perhaps some influence from Spain’s Muslim history that extended into the late 1400s. The saeta is a rare cultural amalgamation of all three of Spain’s major religious and musical histories.
The saeta is a passionately extolling song often sung acapella, or with a sombre drum beat or simply guitar. It’s traditionally meant to be sung directly to an image of Jesus or Mary. It's a pretty grassroots genre: rather than always being left to the professionals, the saeta can be a musical object of individual participation. Anyone who felt swept up in religious excitation could reasonably bust out in a saeta a few hundred years ago. I think we need to normalize breaking into song again, because even saeta today is mostly performed by professionals rather than laymen.
Today, we’re really crate digging as our singer Salako only has 33 monthly listeners on Spotify. Maybe he’ll get a little boost this holy weekend. Perhaps it’s the slightly unsettling, very literal and quintessentially Catholic depiction of Jesus smack-dab on the album cover. But putting its significance at the forefront is integral to represent such reverent music. “Va camino de la cruz” opens up with dramatic, militaristic snare drumming, setting the pious tone. While I found the vocal on “Un mal Judas lo vendió” particularly impressive, the singer’s vocals are the highlight throughout the record. He sustains breath-defying runs stunningly, even through vocal breaks belie the sheer passion in the delivery. The tone and instrumentation are very similar throughout, with the spare snare drumming and voice only occasionally punctuated by a bright organ shifting the tone from solemnity to celebration of resurrection. Musically, it’s an artfully spot on representation of the holiday. It’s a far cry from the colorful Easter eggs and flowery imagery I grew up with, but it feels like a more authentic manifestation of the gravity of such a day that a figure was said to have died for everybody’s sins. Intense, sure, but alas, Catholicism.