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The power of love and music |
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Written by McClatchy Tribune
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Wednesday, 02 August 2006 |
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 Don’t think for a second that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young have the market cornered on Hall of Famers spouting political views.
It’s the first topic that springs from that shamanistic mystic Carlos Santana during our brief phone chat: “I think a lot of people are afraid that America’s becoming like the Spanish Inquisition. You can’t actually say what you feel now.
“During Vietnam we said it: ‘It’s wrong to kill people. It’s wrong not to show the war on TV, because then it’s impersonal.’ When we saw Vietnam on TV, all of a sudden it was about our sisters and brothers and sons and daughters. Right now we don’t look at it like that. We look at it like an accountant looks at numbers.”
Clearly he remains almost as outspoken as his peers. Yet there is a crucial difference between CSN&Y’s soapbox stance and Santana’s show.
“I speak very little about this during the concert,” he says. “I just say, `This song is called “Evil Ways,” and we dedicate it to George Bush.’ But the song right after that is (Coltrane’s) ‘A Love Supreme.’ That’s the difference. We still believe that the power of love will transform the love for power.
“For me, it’s about consciousness. It’s not important to bash Democrats or Republicans. To me, Sony, Starbucks, Nike, Coca-Cola – that’s what patriotism is to me, just products that people can invest in emotionally and financially. For me, it’s more important to utilize the music to ...”
He cut off his own thought to make a point. “Are you ready for this one? This is the one that counts.”
OK, shoot.
“My role is to remind individuals that there is divinity in our DNA.”
Figure that one out for yourself. The man who tells me he was able to see “rivers of diamonds” in people’s eyes at a very young age _ one of the ways he realized he was born differently, he says _ well, he doesn’t offer further explanation.
Instead, he invites me to “crystallize your perception.”
“This is something I said to Prince,” he continues. “Stay in your imagination like you are 7 years old. You have purity and innocence. And the rest of your life is like Disneyland _ every ride is paid for, so enjoy it. The only thing you have to do is have the courage not to worry about what other people think when you’re screaming on the roller coasters.”
Santana has learned how to tune out such distractions, especially lately. In light of having replicated the star-studded formula for his Grammy-grabbing 1999 comeback album “Supernatural” not once (for 2002’s “Shaman”) but twice (with last year’s “All That I Am”), the legendary guitarist has had to deflect more than his share of criticism recently.
“I had 30 years of playing music that nobody was listening to,” he says. “So I’m the person who is not afraid to tell you that I’m having my cake and eating it, too.
“It didn’t used to be like this. I was afraid to get out of my four-block radius in the Mission District. That was my turf. Now the whole galaxy is my turf. Now I get to play with Justin Timberlake and Placido Domingo and Metallica and Buddy Guy _ and it’s all the same to me, man.”
That said, Santana says don’t expect “Supernatural IV.” Once his current tour wraps, he intends to take more than a year off, travel through Africa with his family and “crystallize what my soul wants to do.”
“There’s a music that wants to come out of me that is very quiet,” he says, “and I need to get even quieter to hear it.”
And he doesn’t fear the repercussions of finally shelving the blueprint that spawned smashes like “Smooth” and “The Game of Love” and helped make the 58-year-old a VH1 staple.
“I’ve been accused of committing career suicide like seven times in my life. For me, it’s OK to do that, to do something like 'Caravanserai’ or my work with John McLaughlin that makes people scratch their heads at first. It’s healthy to commit career suicide. I look forward to doing it again.” | Only registered users can write comments.
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