Birthday Shout Out to Carlos Santana
A pioneer of electric guitar and visionary fusions of musical style
The music and vision of Carlos Santana has been in my orbit ever since I saw Santana’s sizzling performance in the WOODSTOCK movie (from August 1969).
I marvel at his fusion of Latin and world music, jazz, psychedelic rock, and pop, but I didn’t grasp the depth of it till recent years, amplified because I now live in the San Francisco neighborhood where Santana grew up, and he’s played with musicians I work with.
In 2009 I was honored to participate in a Santana tribute concert produced by The Uptown Music Collective (based in Williamsport PA, UMC is a music education academy devote to uplifting young people [and some older ones] with music and community).
Santana’s cover of “Oye Como Va” went Top 20 in 1971, but it was originally a 1962 cha-cha hit for the legendary composer-bandleader-percussionist Tito Puente. The repeating block chord ostinato pattern in the song was probably borrowed from “Chanchullo,” a 1957 mambo by Cuban bassist-composer Israel “Cachao” Lopez. Both songs are lyrically sourced from primal “street life,” but “Oye Como Va” has grown past that. Because of the song’s American, Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican roots, it’s now a badge of interconnectedness and hybridity for Latin music in the USA and beyond. Here we are performing it at the Community Arts Center with “more cowbell” and superb lead guitar by Scott Francis. Meanwhile, thank you Carlos for your years of musical service, vision, and bringing people together.
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