The flamenco score of Lent

El Ash WednesdayMarch 5 is the day that the 2025 calendar marks the beginning of the Lent, the beginning of liturgical celebrations within the Catholic community. It is, therefore, the season in which the flamencoWe prepare to commemorate the Resurrection of Jesus through sung prayer.

The date is determined based on the lunar cycle. It is set by counting back 46 days from Easter Sunday, excluding Sundays. And it is the time when The saeteros already have their throats greased for reflection, penitence and conversion through a cante, the saeta, which, although professionalized, is still a call to inner transformation and spiritual preparation for Easter. Ultimately, it is the way in which our singers recognize their fragility and seek God's grace on their journey of faith.

But until we reach Easter Sunday, when, according to the canonical gospels, we commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after he was crucified, flamencos attract the attention of those lovers of the genre who find in the saetero the spokesman of the lament of a people who yearn to remember the Sacred Drama in all its popular significance.

Andalusia, to generalize, returns, then, to the raw and direct truth of the saeta, that which extends the arms of its complaint through the crowd. And it does so with the Schools of Saetas that proliferate in localities such as Sevilla, Málaga, El Puerto de Santa María, Carmona o Utrera, among others, but also with the enhancement of the exaltations, acts that, either organized by public institutions or by the associative network, are celebrated in various religious, cultural and emotional contexts, given that the saetas are neither impersonal nor opaque, since they enjoy the interest of the fans and at many times will move the most demanding.

The act closest to the person signing is announced as Exaltations of Lent, concerts organized by the Culture and Youth area of ​​the Provincial Council of Seville and that, coordinated by Pedro Chicharro, this year they are expanding to locations such as Constantina (March 9), The corner place (day 16), The Puebla de Cazalla (day 23), Umbrella (day 29) and Aznalcazar (day 30), where, as a religious act that it is, all will take place in a temple except for the Moorish town, which will host the exaltation in the Antonio Fuentes Winery.

The list of saeteros agreed upon by the Seville Provincial Administration represents the towns of Utrera, La Puebla de Cazalla and Lebrija, respectively, and are Ana Consolacion Garcia Segovia, Blond Son y Fernanda Peña, saeteros who obviously live off the wealth of the old and great masters, but who form a personality that tends to provide complexity to the style, while marking distance from the origins so that they seem new and with updated invention.

«The Exaltations of Lent are organized by the Department of Culture and Youth of the Provincial Council of Seville and this year they are expanding to towns such as Constantina (March 9), La Rinconada (March 16), La Puebla de Cazalla (March 23), Umbrete (March 29) and Aznalcázar (March 30). All of them will take place in a temple except for the Moorish village, which will host the exaltation at the Bodega Antonio Fuentes»

From the confession of their feelings, we can say that Ana Consolación, Rubito and Fernanda are romantics, and from the structural solidity they express in the saeta and the order of their developments, they appear as classics, although each in their own way.

This confirms, in the same way, why in the saeta the apparent ease for the melody harms the depth and the dramatic force of the musical idea, without ceasing to penetrate into the peculiarity of this cante seasonal.

The rule is valid and incontestable for the vast majority of his contemporaries. Because while it is true that nothing dies as soon as a cante unfruitful, the attitude we adopt before the arrow is to consider it for its unlimited permanence in our spirit and for the historical perpetuity achieved.

It is the dominant tone in these Lenten sound exaltations. Note if not the XII Exaltation of the Saeta, organized by the city councils of Mairena del Alcor (March 9), Utrera (day 13), Écija (day 23) and Vélez-Málaga (day 28) –this one with the help of the Provincial Council of Malaga–, where each town contributes its own saeteros, with the novelty this year that Écija will also contribute with the creation of a new processional march, Mercies of Mary, by the composer Aurelio Gurrea Chalet.

Names like those of Bonela Jr., Manuel Castulo, Virginia Gamez o Jose de Chaparro They are, among the many, clear examples of voices that not only know the codes of the typology of the saeta, but are proud of their practice, hence they are the spirituality of the temperament flamenco and the deep religious feeling of those who ask them for the need to pour out their stormy hearts to bring, to the terrain that is propitious for it, the epic mystery of the first Christian years.

This is how the territories flamencoyes, since Madrid to the communities of Catalonia y Estremadura, and mainly in all corners of Andalusia, announce from the beginning of Lent the preparatory verse that gives way to the effervescence of the cry, the one that the singer nails in a dazzling way in the psychology of the crowd and that leads to some hair-raising thirds, compositions through which the poetic virtues of our devotions are carried and anonymous and restless prayers that, by revealing wonder and magical suggestion, so completely penetrate the blood of our people.