In charge of a mystical and proudly Latin guitar, the Mexican-American artist Carlos Santana turns 70 tomorrow, giving concerts and about to launch his new album with the stars of black music The Isley Brothers.
“I’m retired from retiring,” he said slyly in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, in which he said that after the impending “Power of Peace”, which will go on sale on July 28, will release a disc recorded with the Producer Rick Rubin and titled “Global Revelation” as a reference to the African sounds that will dominate this work.
Meanwhile, Santana will be in the next months of touring North America with stops in cities such as Las Vegas, Orlando or Nashville in the United States and Cancun in Mexico.
The trajectory of this master of guitar and Latin fusion transits from its Mexican origins and its explosion in the San Francisco hippie until its consolidation as global bestsellers.
Born on July 20, 1947 in Autlán de Navarro, a municipality in the Mexican state of Jalisco, Carlos Santana grew up in Tijuana before emigrating to San Francisco in the 1960s, where the counterculture and the hippie movement promised frantic adventures for young people with Desire to experiment with sex, music and drugs.
In the Californian city he founded the multiethnic band Santana along with keyboardist Gregg Rolie, bassist David Brown and percussionists Michael Shrieve, José “Chepito” Areas and Michael Carabello.
The guitarist’s taste for blues and rock melded with the group’s Latin and African rhythms to give rise to a vibrant combination that swept the impressive albums “Santana” (1969) and “Abraxas” (1970).
As much to the experimentation as to the party on the stage, Santana captivated the public of the festival of Woodstock in 1969 with a overwhelming interpretation of “Soul Sacrifice” that still today is remembered like one of the great moments of that hippie macroevento.
Also from that first time of Santana are the hit songs “Black Magic Woman”, “Samba Pa Ti” or the unmistakable “Oye Como Va” by Tito Puente.
The formation of the group varied with the time and in the years 70 Carlos Santana entered in lands like the jazz with the disc “Caravanserai” (1972) while deepening in its declared mysticism when adopting the name Devadip after placing under the spiritual guide Of the guru Sri Chinmoy.
Although he has never stopped giving concerts and recording albums, Santana surprised the world in 1999 with “Supernatural”, a sales success with which he won nine Grammy Awards, including the best album of the year.
This album, in which artists such as Maná, Eric Clapton or Lauryn Hill participated as guests, as well as a letter of introduction for the new generations who had Santana as a declining musician.
Now Santana fans are counting on the days to be released on July 28 their new work “Power of Peace” with Ronald and Ernie Isley of the famous black group The Isley Brothers.
This album will include versions of Stevie Wonder, The Impressions, Marvin Gaye or Burt Bacharach, among others.
Installed in Las Vegas with his second wife Cindy Blackman, Santana keeps track of what is happening in the current convulsions, and especially what has to do with the Latino population and the controversial actions of President Donald Trump.
“When Hitler was in power, there was the Resistance, and from there he went to the ‘beatniks’, then to Bob Dylan and Greenwich Village, then to San Francisco and the hippies.There is always a new wave. Process, “argued the musician in the interview with Rolling Stone.
Santana also said that every time Trump appears on television, he turns it off so as not to listen to him: “We should learn that we are at that point as humans to make the table bigger and not the wall higher.”
