My grandmother often reminds me that my late father's favorite band was Santana. It is one of her small ways of staying connected to both him and me. And while in this retro-rock world it isn't as rare as it once was for parents and children to enjoy the same music, it is unusual that the artist is still alive and well, producing music that is just as good as, if not better than, earlier works.
Santana's latest album Milagro (PolyGram Records, 1992) is funky, soothing, and spiritual. Through songs such as "Somewhere in Heaven," "Agua Que Va Caer," "Red Prophet," and "Free All the People (South Africa)," the music moves from rock to merengue to jazz and back again.
Though all of Santana's albums reveal the band's intimate relationship to the spiritual world and the struggle of the faithful to "keep on keeping on," Milagro ("miracle") uses more overtly Christian images than those of the past. Throughout the album, Carlos Santana invokes his own cloud of witnesses: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Marley, John Coltrane, and Marvin Gaye; as well as recently departed friends Miles Davis and Bill Graham, to whose lives the album is dedicated.
"Latino psychedelic blues" is perhaps one way of describing Santana's music. Add "eclectic spirituality and justice-oriented" and the description becomes ridiculously incomprehensible. While true, such nomenclatures are required by the reductionary critics for whom every sound has its place. Pigeonholing has always been difficult in the world of rock and roll, and the globally influenced artists of the '90s, like Carlos Santana, really make such distinctions impossible.
The following quote appears on the inside of the album jacket: "Humans are divided into different clans and tribes, and belong to countries and towns. But I find myself a stranger to all communities and belong to no settlement. The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe." More than global eclecticism, the music of Santana represents a cultural unity -- a mestizaje -- that goes far beyond mere rhythmical pandering.
Critics have pointed out that Carlos was innovative in the '60s rock world by mixing rock and roll with Latin and jazz rhythms. But from the perspective of the Latino community, there really wasn't a whole lot unique about Latino and jazz sounds in rock music -- in fact, rock is based on them. What was unique was the type of rock and roll with which Santana blended these rhythms -- the psychedelic music out of the '60s Haight-Asbury experience -- and the fact that he maintained his Mexican heritage while doing so.
In many ways, Santana opened the doors for Latinos into the Anglo-dominated rock world (unrecognized prophet Ritchie Valens notwithstanding), which later bands such as Los Lobos have walked through. As he did a little later with Indian spirituality, Carlos acted as the envoy of the Latino community into a whole new world at the critical time when we were rediscovering our identity as Chicanos.
Those who have listened to Santana's music over the last 25 years know that his music is, at its essence, spirit-driven. Whether via his extensive '70s forays into Eastern theologies, or, more recently, his soulful devotion to Christianity, Carlos' soaring guitar riffs take us to a world far beyond the tropical island images that are often associated with the Latin/American rock sound. Santana uses the electric guitar as a spiritual guide that has, for those who have ears to hear, the ability to lift the souls of listeners into sacred realms.
One has the sense that music for Santana is much more than a profiteering venture into the popular entertainment world; it is a calling that transports us across the River Jordan. For those who can appreciate the rock format -- and much of it is rock -- the music of Carlos Santana contains some of the most basic elements to human spirituality: emotion, transcendence, and power.
Milagro is filled with music that heals the sick and makes you get up and dance. Santana's music has helped me through broken romances and spiritual crises in ways I can't begin to recount here. In the struggle of the faithful against the principalities and powers of negativity in this world, music as positive as this invokes hope and possibility against all the odds -- indeed milagros. It is a soulful and -- to paraphrase Bill Graham -- special sound, filled with the joy of loving and giving from the heart.
Aaron Gallegos was a member of Sojourners Community and an organizer for special projects at Sojourners when this review appeared.
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