If you know anything about the Voudu culture, you’ll have heard of Baron Samedi. With his name containing the French word for “Saturday”, he is usually shown wearing a top hat, black tail coat, and dark glasses. While Baron Samedi is associated with disruption, obscenity, debauchery, and being particularly fond of tobacco and rum, he is also the Loa of Resurrection, and aids the practitioner of Voudu in life, including with success, sexuality, spirituality, protection, healing and even in death. It’s in this latter capacity that Baron Samedi is called upon, for healing by those near or approaching death, as it is only the Baron that can accept an individual into the realm of the dead.
The new single from guUs, ‘Baron Saturday’, takes us to Louisiana, where the artist allows himself to fully express his experimental desires – as well as have a lot of fun. With its somewhat off-kilter beats and jangling guitar, and enticingly charismatic vocals, guUs is able to express how he felt in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; particularly how much of New Orleans was laid waste, and the leaders at the time did very little to assist the needy and poorest of her citizens.
In the video for ‘Baron Sunday’, we see guUs in an overgrown cemetery, dressed as the Baron himself. He’s wearing Mardi Gras beads, a walking cane, and carrying a bottle of the Baron’s favourite tipple, rum. In guUs’s previous release, ‘Moonhangin Man’, he chose modern jazz as his genre. For ‘Baron Saturday’ he taps into the local flavour of Zydeco, mixed with a southern blues sound. The result is not simply pleasing to the ear, but also one that will find its way onto the top of your playlist.
Check out guUs and his music online on his official website, Facebook, and Instagram. Watch the video for ‘Baron Saturday’ below.
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