Carlos Santana is known for his instantly recognizable and much-celebrated guitar tone. It’s his sonic signature, where sustain meets spirituality regardless of which guitar and amplifier combination he’s used over the years. Much has been written describing the sound, Santana’s influences and his gear, but the magic comes from a place deeper than that. Santana’s tone lives and breathes, its pulse rate determined by syncopated rhythms powered by Latin percussion.
To play in Santana (the band) must be a dream for most percussionists. The current lineup includes Carlos’ better half, Cindy Blackman Santana, on drums, Karl Perazzo on timbales and Paoli Mejías on percussion, who bring to life classic covers originated by greats such as Tito Puente (“Oye Cómo Va”), Willie Bobo (“Evil Ways”) and Babatunde Olatunji (“Jin-Go-Lo-Ba”).
Santana’s father was a violinist who lived to play his instrument. Young Carlos started out on violin but switched to Gibson guitars with feedback-reducing P-90 pickups, played through state-of-the-art amplifiers and increasingly powerful speaker heads. There’s little room for fumbling when mistakes are broadcast at deafening levels.
He perfected his blues playing and enhanced it with sustained notes, bending and vibrating strings expressively while developing a precision picking style that allowed him to erupt with dramatic flurries of notes. Jazz saxophonists such as John Coltrane and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, John McLaughlin and Gábor Szabó inspired him to expand his horizons.
Santana chose spirituality over substance by the early ’70s and went in jazzier and experimental directions, culminating in Illuminations, a 1974 collaboration with Alice Coltrane, and 1974 studio album Borboletta. The band would return to the Top 10 for the first time in four years in 1976 with Amigos, but by then Santana had practically become a vessel for divinely inspired wavelengths and frequencies.
“When you’re playing music you’re bringing light into the darkness,” says Santana in the intro to his “Art and Soul of Guitar” online MasterClass. He often describes his own playing in metaphors and similes, leaving music teachers and guitar magazine writers to explain the theory.
Santana is arguably an architect of jazz fusion, having pioneered the use of modal approaches to lead playing. He was a key figure in flavoring ’60s rock with alternative approaches to playing scales. Santana could add exotic elements to his soloing that basic blues playing could not provide.
This happens in “Black Magic Woman,” which sounds more exotic than minor-key sad. Santana opened up his playing by blending genres and styles, then pulled back to integrate them all into his own guitar voice. It’s a voice nowadays mainly played through PRS guitars designed by master luthier Paul Reed Smith, whose relationship with Santana dates back more than 40 years and resulted in a signature line of instruments.
It’s also a voice guest rapper Darryl “DMC” McDaniels celebrated on “Let the Guitar Play,” Santana’s latest single released in January: “And the guitar player lets the guitar play. That is such a good sound.”
House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. ticketmaster.com
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