Carlos Santana is a strange personality because in his music and development the contrasts of business collide without hindering each other. He is a dreamer and businessman, a pioneer and at the same time more conservatively creative. In addition, of course, one of the longest-serving guitarists in rock music, who succeeds in demonstrating tireless joy with the same pentatonic scale. So it is a kind of personified mantra – it generates its happiness from repetition.
Which is not at all awkward. In this way, he finally makes himself independent of the innovation dictation, without necessarily looking old-fashioned. In his words, spoken on the phone: “I am very rooted in African rhythms and European melodies.” Rhythm is the masculine principle, melody the feminine principle. “When the two of them come together, there is a unity. African music is fundamental, it understands joy, meditation. Some call it ‘Voodoo’, I prefer ‘connectedness with the universe” https: //www.sueddeutsche .de / culture /. “At least that gives him the enthusiasm and keeps” what is also important “young.
It is normal for him to invite great musicians to make music with him
Santana has also been saying such sentences for decades. Marketing mantras and that too: disarming. There is nothing fundamentally new to report about “Blessings And Miracles”, his new album. The way he reports about it himself is then again, well, fine to listen to.
“Actually, not that much has changed,” he says, for example. It is normal for him to invite great musicians to make music with him. “As Wayne Shorter once said, ‘Brand new and yet familiar.’ Balance, equilibrium, that’s also part of it. Balance, for example, between pieces that you can play on the radio and completely different things. ” That’s what it sounds like.
And that’s what the new album sounds like, created over two years under Corona conditions, a bit divided into division of labor in the studio. It tells stories of love, joy, peace and enlightenment. There are guests like Kirk Hammett from Metallica, with whom Santana dueled on stage back in the nineties, or Chick Corea, who died in February of this year, who is comparatively cautious and garnishes a Latin happy passage. Singers from Asdru Sierra to Chris Stapleton and Rob Thomas to daughter Stella Santana decorate the pieces with sometimes more, sometimes less lard and soul. The fantastic drummer Cindy Blackman, married to Santana for a good ten years, drums the base reinforced by Percussions.
The dramaturgical blueprint of the album corresponds roughly to the concept developed in “Supernatural” (eight Grammys, sold a good 23 million times, largely frenetic reviews, in the US for almost two years in the charts): one half with strolling instrumentals and improvising rock Flow for the hippiesque community, the other half with beach bar-compatible radio doodle including key stimuli from R&B feeling to reggaeton. In the middle of all sorts there are pearls like the musically meandering and captivatingly communicating cover version of “Whiter Shade Of Pale” in a small group with Steve Winwood as the singing and organizing counterpart.
Quality work, less ambitious than the themed album “Africa Speaks” or the retro program “IV”, with which Santana remembered the early records of his Mission District team over the past decade. But consistently in Santana’s attitude to celebrate the “blessings and wonders” of his career.
“Inspiration is like a little bird that flies into my room and perches on my shoulder.”
And from there to go on again: “For example, I’m planning a project with Derek Trucks and Eric Clapton, more of a soundtrack like for ‘The Good, The Bad And The Ugly’. Music, like for a Western.” He would also like to record an album with songs by Sonny Sharrock, the jazz guitarist who could almost sound like a saxophonist. Maybe more of a duo with Steve Winwood. “Something like that is the other side. Music for radio and intergalactic music, as Sun Ra did. There were times like ‘Caravanserai’, ‘Welcome’ or ‘Borboletta’, when I wasn’t interested in radio I wanted to look ahead, had the sound of Weather Report, Herbie Hancock or Miles in view. But now I’m more fascinated by keeping this balance. “
It is the privilege of a long life as an artist. In the coming year Carlos Santana will celebrate his 75th birthday and can look back on well over half a century of rock music, in which he has left traces of acoustic happiness as a Mexican-American style border crosser between Latin groove, improv spirit and guitar obsession. And those are the actual “Blessings And Miracles”, formulated long ago and now freshly remembered with a new album, by the man of acoustic images, sometimes snapshots and sometimes palimpsest. “Inspiration,” he says as a bon mot, “is like a little bird that flies into my room and perches on my shoulder.” The dreamer speaks and rejoices in the miracles.