Music is powerful—and today, people in their 20s are both modernizing and popularizing a 70-plus-year-old music particularly known for its power.
A new generation has taken the sounds of classic soul and ushered them into a new era. A crowning achievement: Thee Sacred Souls’ performances at Coachella this year. I was able to catch their second-weekend set on Friday, and I was struck by the large numbers of 20-somethings singing along (myself included).
Local band Café Canela is also tapping into this soul revival—and gaining worldwide fans. I wrote in a recent story, “Songs ‘Stuck In Love’ and ‘If I Fall’ hone a time-capsule sound with caressing guitar lines and vocal performances that will make you swoon. Reverb-soaked guitars and haunting vocal melodies combine to craft modern soul ballads, much to the same effect of Coachella act Thee Sacred Souls.”
I chatted with Emanuel Cazares, the songwriter and producer behind Café Canela, about this revival in soul music. While some have dubbed his brand of music “Chicano soul,” he pushed back, saying the sound is based in soul, “and we just happen to be Mexican.”
“Soul music has become popular in the last six or seven years, and I’m just a very, very, very small part of it,” he said.
Staples in this revival are dreamy, twangy guitar; endless bass melodies; intensely tight and expressive drumming; and emotional vocal performances. During Thee Sacred Souls’ Coachella set, all of those boxes were checked. Their first two songs, “Lucid Girl” and “Price I’ll Pay,” had the audience locked into a timeless groove.
The sonic qualities are not too far off from classic recordings, meaning today’s bands are truly emphasizing the “soul” rather than the “revival.”
“I’m just making music that I’ve always loved and that I’ve always heard since I was growing up,” Cazares said.
Because of the deep musical connections that both Cafe Canela and Thee Sacred Souls have with old-soul jams, some have started to deem this music “cultural.” Again, Cazares pushed back a bit.
“We’re not trying to be the culture or anything; we’re just writing music in the style that we like, and that’s we want to hear, and the culture embraces it,” he said. “It finds its way to the culture.”
Many soul-revival jams feature love, either lost or gained, as a main subject. During Thee Sacred Souls’ Coachella set, lead singer Josh Lane said, “This one goes out to anyone trying to make a relationship work right now!”
Said Cazares: “I feel like we will always be writing about heartbreak and love. It’s something that’s been relatable for the past 100 years (and beyond).”
Thee Sacred Souls’ show had an intense amount of energy for an early-day set. Fans were dancing nonstop. Lane even jumped into the crowd, hyping up the growing audience. the set had similar vibes to lively hip-hop, EDM and dance acts.
“It’s fresh again, and it’s a respected genre once again,” Cazares said. “I think a lot of people are tired of hip-hop. The new hip-hop nowadays, or the trap music, it all sounds the same, and the soul music movement is a fresh breath of air for a lot of people. It resonates with the Chicano culture that has been bumping oldies since the ’70s or the ’80s. It resonates not only with them, but with the record collectors who have been collecting Northern Soul music.”
A highlight of Thee Sacred Souls’ set was the closer, “Can I Call You Rose?” The band’s most popular song features the soul revivalists operating at their very best; if you didn’t know better, you might think this is a song from the ’50s.
The viral popularity of the song (over 400,000 videos have used the track on TikTok) was clear from the audience reaction, as you could hear more of the lyrics being sung by the audience than being sung Lane. Cazares has also experienced modern soul’s TikTok effect, as his song “Stuck in Love” has almost 500 uses on the app—and the recording has 938,000 listens on YouTube as of this writing.
“I’m not even really a Tiktok user, but I made one just to connect with fans a little bit more,” Cazares said. “It became part of the culture. I see people posting their cars to it, their low riders, or people are spinning my record at some swap meet somewhere, or some car meet. I became part of the culture—and it’s really cool seeing it and watching it happen.”