El Burrito Sabanero

Hugo Blanco Manzo, a popular Venezuelan musician, wrote El Burrito Sabanero (initially known as El Burrito de Belén) in 1972. He was also the composer of the famous song Moliendo Café.

El Burrito Sabanero is an aguinaldo-type song, a genre from Puerto Rico and Venezuela whose songs were initially based on Spanish Christmas carols but later evolved into coplas (quartets) and décimas (ten-verse compositions). These aguinaldos were traditionally sung by groups of friends or neighbours who would go from house to house singing during Christmas time. The common instruments used were the cuatro (a small, four-string guitar), maracas, and drums.

The composer decided that the song would sound better if sung by children so the Coro Infantil Venezuela conducted by Raúl Cabrera -who was also its founder- along with the eight-year-old soloist Ricardo Cuenci, was chosen for the performance.

Raúl Cabrera, who arranged the choir version, was working in his father's record shop at the time. This shop distributed jukeboxes across the country. Raúl began placing El Burrito Sabanero in the jukeboxes to make it famous. Since then, it has been recorded many times and is well-known worldwide.

Here you have got the sound file.

.