Cindy Blackman Santana finds her voice
Jazz, rock drum dynamo sings on new album tracks
Howdid acclaimed drummer Cindy Blackman Santana react when her husband and musical partner, guitar legend Carlos Santana, first suggested she make an album featuring her singing?
“Iwas like, ‘That’sOK, honey, but thanks!’ ” she recalled with a laugh.
“Just because I love drumming so much, my first thought about making any music is to get on the drums and create with people. Before Imet Carlos, my motherwould say to me, ‘You should sing!’ I would tell her, ‘Oh, mom, you loveme. Thanks very much, but no, thank you.’ Then Carloswould hear me around the house and say, ‘You should sing.’ I said, ‘No.’ ”
But times, like time signatures, can evolve and change in the hands of a gifted and flexible drummer. And Blackman Santana is extremely flexible, as she has demonstrated on her 11 previous solo albums and her collaborations with everyone fromLennyKravitz, Patti LaBelle, The Drifters and Jack Bruce to such jazz heavyweights as singer CassandraWilson, trumpeter FreddieHubbard and saxophonists JackieMcLean and SamRivers.
Blackman Santana has found her voice— literally — on her new solo outing, the eclectic “Give the Drummer Some,” released Sept. 18. She sings on 11 of the 17 selections on the genre-leaping album and co-wrote 15 of them. The musical guests include her husband and such stars as fusion-jazz pioneer John McLaughlin, Metallica’s KirkHammett and Living Colour’s Vernon Reid.
“Give the Drummer
Some” was co-produced by Blackman Santana, her husband and ace drummerturned-producerNarada MichaelWalden, whose past credits include hit recordings with Aretha Franklin, WhitneyHouston andMariah Carey. The album’s title is a nod to James Brown’s oft-sampled 1969 classic, “Funky Drummer,” on which Clyde Stubblefield’s intensely propulsive playing prompted Brown to exult: “Give the drummer some!”
Blackman Santana’s only singing on record until now was on “I Remember,” which she wrote several decades ago. She performed it on the 2016 album “Power of Peace,” a collaboration between her husband’s band and The Isley Brothers.
“I love singing, but I needed some encouragement, surely,” Blackman Santana said. “Because if
I’m singing, it means I’m either not playing drums or I’m splittingmy time between them. I love the drums so much that I don’t want to splitmy time with anything or anybody, not evenmyself— or another version ofmyself!”
The album is the latest musical chapter for this Ohio native, who since 2010 has been the drummer in the pioneering Latin-rock band Santana. The groupwas founded in San Francisco in the late 1960s by her husband.
Original plans for the “Give the Drummer Some” — which has been in the works since 2017— called for the album to be equally divided between instrumental and vocal numbers. That nearly two-thirds of the songs ended up featuring enthusiastic vocals by Blackman Santanawas purely incidental, not by design.
“It happened very organically. We recorded all the instrumental stuff first and the vocal stuff came later,” she said.
Her jazz epiphany came when a family friend, drummerDougWood, introduced the then-13year-old Blackman Santana to pianist Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco.” Written by Powell and recorded in 1951, it featured thewonderfully polyrhythmic drumming ofMax Roach.
“Dougwrote out a pattern on whichMaxwas alternating between playing cowbell and cymbal with his right hand, 4/4 on bass drum, 2 and 4 with his hi-hat, and triplets with his left hand,” Blackman Santana recalled. “Iwas like: ‘What? I gotta learn howto do that!’ It gotmy brain buzzing and really intrigued me. HearingMax opened up a lot for me, in terms ofmy thinking and
using the fullness of the drum kit.”
Young girls or boys taking up drumming nowhave a fair number of accomplishedwomen role models, including Blackman Santana, Sheila E., Terri Lyne Carrington, Kim Thompson, Allison Miller, Susie Ibarra, Prince band alumHannah FordWelton and 23-year-old Japanese phenom SenriKawaguchi.
But when Blackman Santana started playing music in the mid-1960s, therewere almost no prominentwomen drummers in jazz, rock or any other idiom.
“I never thought of drumming as a girl as having any gender bias, because I was never taught that,” noted Blackman Santana.
“My immediate family only had an issue with the expense of the drums and their volume. My parents never said anything about me being a girl, so I didn’t knowitwas an issue for anyone. I only found out when I didmy first professional gig at 13. The guys in the bandwere all six or seven years older than me. The guitaristwas a friend ofmy older sister.”
Aftermoving toNew York in the early 1980s, Blackman Santana befriended such jazz drum innovators as Art Blakey and, later, TonyWilliams, who remains her biggest percussive inspiration to this day.
Her 2010 album, “Another Lifetime,” paid rousing tribute to the lateWilliams’ pioneering jazz fusion band, Lifetime. In 2012, she formed the four-piece band Spectrum Road, whichwas created to salute and extendWilliams’ musical legacy with Lifetime. Spectrum Road’s lineup featured guitarist Reid, who plays on her new album, organist JohnMedeski and former Cream and Lifetime bassist Jack Bruce.
But it is saxophonist JackieMcLean whom she credits for providing one of her most enduring musical lessons.
“I lovedworking with Jackie,” Blackman Santana enthused. “He toldme one of the most important things I’ve learned thus far inmy entire life, which was: ‘Cindy, when you play withmy band, play like it’s your band. Ownit like it’s yours.’ And Iwas like, ‘Wow.’ So, fromthen on, anytime I playwith anybody— whether I’m in the band, or it’smy band, or it’s one song I’m recording— I completely own what I’m doing.
“Because that’s theway I can interjectmy heart into every note I play. Even if it’s awritten part I’m playing, I want to interjectmy footprint into the soul of whatever I’m playing and whatever (style) it is. That’s what Jackie taught me— and I’ll give 100% to any musical situation I’m in.”