Day 243: Santana – Abraxas

I thought today I should go for another heavy hitter who I don’t know too much about, and Santana definitely fits the bill – I thought it was just the stage name of the dude, Carlos Santana, but apparently Santana is the band, go figure. I also didn’t know that “Black Magic Woman” was a cover of a Peter Green song, so clearly I know nothing. Let’s listen to their biggest album, Abraxas.

Album cover courtesy of Columbia Records

Carlos Santana grew up in Tijuana, Mexico, but moved to San Francisco in 1961 and became a part of the first wave of the emerging hippie movement. He’d played guitar since he was 8 years old and played in bands in Tijuana, but when he was in San Francisco, he was exposed to many different musical influences and started fusing them together:

“If I would go to some cat’s room, he’d be listening to Sly [Stone] and Jimi Hendrix; another guy to the Stones and the Beatles. Another guy would be listening to Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaría. Another guy would be listening to Miles [Davis] and [John] Coltrane… to me, it was like being at a university.”

He founded the band Santana in 1966, originally as the Santana Blues Band but later just going by Santana. The band’s classic line-up consisted of him with keyboardist and lead vocalist Gregg Rollie, bassist David Brown, drummer Michael Shrieve and percussionists Jose Areas and Mike Carabello, but the lineup has changed many times over the years, with Carlos Santana as the only permanent member.

Abraxas was released in 1970 as Santana’s second studio album, and it features their most memorable hits, “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen” and “Oye Como Va”, both of which are covers. It features experimental Latin fusion rock, with jazz, blues and psychedelic rock influences, among others. It was a huge hit, spending six weeks on top of the Billboard 200, and it’s widely viewed as some of the band’s finest work.

There’s a good reason why it’s so revered, Abraxas as an album is sublime. In my head, I associate Santana as dad rock, and as a young lady I didn’t find that too appealing, but with every passing year I find myself pivoting more and more towards the middle aged man rock, so that alone probably meant I was going to like Santana. The howling guitar with the inventive fusion sound creates something that really holds up, and while the covers are the more enduring songs, the original compositions are my favourites from the album – possibly because I’ve heard them less, but still.

Another thing I didn’t know was just how heavily into spirituality Carlos Santana is and how much he imbues that into his work, but with a name like Abraxas, I should have known. I’m always interested in how that shows up in people’s music, and he said that on Abraxas he tried to think with the back of his brain and asked “what’s the sound of a soul praying or a ghost crying?” Cool concept for a song. But his spiritual beliefs also lead him to believe that Satan took down Michael Jackson for being too charitable to children, so you know, grain of salt.

In any case, Abraxas is a very enjoyable album and I know I’ll listen to it again. 9/10.