Santana on the power of peace
Few artists embody the peace-andlove ethos of Woodstock in 2017 quite like Carlos Santana, who went into the festival a relative unknown and led the San Francisco band that shares his name in a career-defining, LSD-enhanced performance.
Nearly five decades later, the man remains a true believer in the healing frequencies of music, still preaching the “Power of Peace,” as he titled a forthcoming album that finds him collaborating with the Isley Brothers and Cindy Blackman Santana, the drummer he proposed to on the Universal Tone Tour in 2010.
As Santana explains it, “From John Coltrane to John Lennon, the music that I love is about inviting people to remember that you are divine, that you have light in you and that you can create miracles and blessings. That’s what I’m about.”
Santana checked in from the road and spoke for more than 20 minutes, devoting more time to promoting his message of peace than promoting the album with peace in the title — although he did suggest that if that album could be played in shopping malls and elevators everywhere, the frequencies could change the world.
And if you don’t think he honestly believes it, you haven’t been paying attention to Santana these past 50 years.
Here’s what he had to say. Question: I was hoping you could talk a bit about “Power of Peace,” your new collaboration with the Isley Brothers.
Answer: Cindy and I, when we got married, the first song we danced to was “The Look of Love” with Ronnie Isley singing. When you listen to Ronnie Isley singing Burt Bacharach songs, he sculptures every note in such a way that you go, “Oh my God, how can somebody do that?”
So Cindy and I, we were in the frequency of doing something in the future with Ronnie and Ernie. And that opportunity presented itself when we met him, for the first time, in St. Louis. His sister was singing background with Rod Stewart and we were on tour with Rod Stewart.
She said, “You know, Carlos, Ronnie is actually a big fan of you.” So we got together backstage and I told him that I wanted to do this CD and the songs that I wanted to do, which was “Let the Rain Fall on Me,” “God Bless the Child” and a bunch of other ones. And here we are. Q: When is this that you met? A: About three years ago? Q: Wow. I’m surprised you hadn’t met before.
A: I think the first time we crossed paths was in ’75 or so at a CBS convention because they had Earth, Wind & Fire, the Isley Brothers and somehow Santana was in this convention with a lot of black soul. I’m not surprised because I’m a black man myself. I mean, in the way that I learned how to articulate African music a long, long time ago.
I keep saying with total certainty