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We know that a two-hour or three-hour concert is going to feel like fifteen seconds, because the first thing that happens when something spiritual assaults the place, time disappears. Gravity disappears. Issues disappear. -Carlos Santana |
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The Future: Electric Church Music
When we were discussing the past few albums, about how you sort of received a message influencing you towards that direction, do you have any sense what the next ten years might bring us?
 Carlos Santana |
Yes. The music that I want to play is music that is all-inclusive, music that will be able to continue to bring the walls down, like Berlin, to go to Cuba and play there with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, music that has the rhythms of Africa, the melodies of Europe. For example, there's something really victorious when you go "da, da... [sings "La Marseillaise"]." When you play music from Sun Ra, which is really bug-out music, like a supernova exploding in front of you and you hear angels and beginnings and endings. Stravinsky and James Brown and Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix with feedback, all of 'em, there's a certain music that sounds like 2001 [2001: A Space Odyssey] when all the colors assault you and you're going like a gazillion miles an hour and, at the same time, you're standing still. You know what I'm talking about?
I do, yeah. Absolutely.
That's the music that I want to play around the corner, along with On The Corner [by] Miles Davis. I'd like to work very, very soon with Bill Laswell. I'm hearing the music already. This one is very solid and is very kingly, very royal, very regal. It's influenced a lot by Manitas de Plata, a flamenco guitar player who was like the flamenco John Lee Hooker, very raw. I want to play music that's kind of like celestial hymns. Jimi Hendrix was going that way because he was calling it electric church music. Duke Ellington, before he died he had the Bible on one hand and sheet music on another, and he was doing sacred concerts. I'm just following the script that is given to me, and after a while you can only do what you do. Then, God calls you to do something else and play music that would bring a commonality to all humans and back into their own light.
Our conversation has really revolved around this idea of spirituality, and you've discussed how you quite literally, it sounds like, hear guidance or feel guidance from something above or something bigger than ourselves. There have been times in my life where I've felt that push. Do you have any sense for why you're so open to that? I think that that may exist for everyone but maybe there's noise that doesn't allow us to hear it. Do you know why you're able to receive that message when some others aren't?
 Carlos Santana |
I was born with a hunger and a thirst to not let go of God's hand when I cross the street. For example, I never play music for money. I never play music to pick up chicks. I never play music to do anything like that, to be famous in show business or entertainment. I just wanted to be adored because people adored my father. When I was five-years-old and saw how women and men and children and old people just adored my father's eyes and his voice and his violin. I just said, "That's what I want. I want to be adored like my dad." And he taught me how to, with the violin, how to talk to birds. He would go like, [whistles]. He goes, "Watch this. Mira, mira." He grabbed the violin and he played, [and] he'd do certain things with the bow and the violin, and then these birds come over and start looking at dad, moving their heads back and forth. Then they start whistling back what he was saying. When I was five or seven-years-old he did that to me. He freaked me out. It's like he showed me the code. There's a way through sounds to communicate with birds and people and plants and just, "Here's the code, man." Here's the universal tone, which is who I am. I am a universal tone like Bob Marley and Coltrane. In one note, people know who I am.
Absolutely.
My dad taught me that there's a way to connect sound [and] resonant vibration immediately to the listener's heart. For me, it's just fun discovering how to activate myself and activate them to a spiritual joy, to celebrate and not to think like a villain or a victim.
You moved from Mexico to San Francisco. I live in San Francisco and I've lived here for a number of years, and I have felt more at home here than any place I've ever been. I wasn't born here but it is my home. You've obviously stayed in the Bay Area for a long time, do you feel like this area has affected your music? Has it affected you as a person?
Absolutely. The Bay Area is not even the United States. The United States can't stand San Francisco because we think outside the box. We're the ones that say the world is round and they say the world is flat. We are the Atlantis of the Bay. There's more artists than con artists per block, per person. The Bay Area, since I've been here, gravitates to consciousness revolution - The Black Panthers, the hippies. The United Nations was founded here in San Francisco. So, yes, I feel very blessed to live in the Bay Area because there's more artists. Plus, in San Francisco or the Bay Area people don't walk around auditioning for a part, man. We passed the audition. In L.A. everybody's sucking their cheeks and trying to be discovered. We don't want to be discovered. We know who we are, and we like it.
Do you think that music has the power to really change the world, to reach beyond the people who are passionate about music? Can music change the world?
 Carlos Santana |
Yes. I will bet you anything that if you put selective music by spiritual musicians on elevators and shopping malls there would be less Columbines, there would be less postals, less rape, less crime. When you're stuck in an elevator and you're ready to go postal and you hear "A Love Supreme" or "One Love" or "What's Going On" or "Blowing in the Wind" or "Imagine" you can't fucking do anything stupid anymore.
You're right.
It won't permit you, man. Your molecules obey the sound of divinity. If you just compile a CD [of] "What's Going On," "Imagine," "One Love," "A Change is Gonna Come," Sam Cook, you know, and you play it in shopping malls continuously I bet you anywhere in the world people would stop fighting and stop stealing and stop raping, because molecules obey the sound of divinity. That's just the way it is. Just like, excuse the expression, when you're 17-years-old and you see something beautiful and you get excited, all the blood rushes to your penis. I'm talking about physical molecules. I'm not talking about the sex or the squirming, the giggling, stupid stuff. I'm talking about the order [of things]. There's a sense of order in this planet. If we would consciously go to Seattle, where they program the Muzaks of all the elevators and hotels in the cities, and say, "We want you to try this just for 24 hours. Just play this kind of music, these 27 songs," you would see an incredible difference in human being behavior.
This spawned another thought. We were talking about some of the collaborations that are easier to get onto the radio than fifteen-minute jams from the '70s. I mean that stuff isn't going to find its way to the radio. Do you think that that was potentially part of why you went in that direction or part of why you were told to go in that direction? Because if we can get your music on the radio - and I don't mean to downplay the quality of that music, it might not be my favorite but it's still quality music - do you think that getting that, returning to the radio, can sort of get that to more people and potentially make somewhat of a shift?
Well, in the words of Malcolm X, "By any means necessary." As long as it's with grace and without brutality, you should assault the senses of the listener. My instructions are get on the radio, work with Clive Davis, work with J. Lo, work with Justin Timberlake. You will have a chance to play with McCoy Tyner and Trey Anastasio and all that. We're all children of God, anyway. But, if you get a chance get on the radio. Prince himself told me, "Because of you, I get to play more guitar." For a while they wouldn't play guitar on the radio, man. There wouldn't be no guitar solos on the radio. The sound of Prince's guitar or Eric Clapton's guitar or Derek Trucks' guitar, it's all about choices. I don't know if Derek wants to get on the radio. Some people don't want to get into radio. They want to stay, quote-unquote, pure. Miles didn't have a problem playing "Human Nature" or "Time After Time," and Coltrane didn't have a problem playing "My Favorite Things." So, why should I get a little snobby and shit about thinking that my stuff is too good to get on the radio?
JamBase | Holy Spheres
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