It’s only April, but Carlos Santana—one of rock’s most legendary guitarists—is already thinking about Christmas. At least that’s the holiday on his mind when discussing the just-released album, Sentient.
“The most accurate way to describe it is like a Christmas tree. And all the ornaments are gratitude, compassion, consideration, mercy, and grace. And the Christmas tree is sentient,” he says in a promo video.
“Very consistent with bringing energy and a sound resonant vibration that brings humanity together to celebrate, what? Our own divinity. Our own light.”
Speaking live from his home via Zoom with a packed wall of awards and framed items behind him, the always spiritually conscious Santana notes that putting together the track listing for Sentient had a bit of divine intervention.
“Like always, I’m guided by the Holy Ghost. So, it’s easy for me to trust and hear the sequence. I wanted to create what was most memorable out of time,” he says. “Take a deep breath, step back, and see the record outside of time. Like Jimi Hendrix the Beatles, or Sly Stone. And Marvin Gaye and Bob Dylan. It’s creating art outside of time.”
As an example of art out of time in a different medium, he mentions Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre Museum.
“It’s astonishing. If you go to Paris, there’s a line of people from all over the world to see that painting. It’s bigger than Taylor Swift!” he says.
“How he captured that smile, it’s a masterpiece. And here’s the good news. Everyone on the planet is a masterpiece. We need to learn to treasure and validate ourselves. Stop looking at ourselves as victims or villains. I like the grace that tells me I am a beam of light from God and worthy of his love. I follow what Jesus said. Love one another, without condition.”
He proposes a sort of new “global CNN” that will only broadcast the “perfection of humanity.” And he name checks Chef Jose Andres, whose organization World Central Kitchen and its staff often heads immediately into danger and destruction zones with the sole purpose of feeding people. In fact, Santana very much wants to see him win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Technically, Sentient is the 27th studio album from the band that bears his name, and of which he’s been the sole consistent member since it formed in 1966 as the Santana Blues Band (and that number is not including his many solo and collaboration records).
But it’s not an effort from the current lineup with newly written and recorded material. Instead, Sentient is a collection of remastered or alternate takes of previously released songs—along with some unreleased material—all of which feature at least Carlos.
They include many collaborations, including ones with Michael Jackson (“Whatever Happens”), Smokey Robinson (“Please Don’t Take Your Love”), Darryl “DMC” McDaniels (“Let the Guitar Play”), and his own wife and Santana band drummer, Cindy Blackman Santana (“Coherence”).
But to Carlos himself, it’s two songs recorded with his main musical hero, Miles Davis (“Get On,” “Rastafario”) that may mean the most. While he has always been upfront about his musical heroes and influences including Jimi Hendrix, John Coltraine, and John McLaughlin, Davis is on a level all his own.
The two first met in 1970 at the famed Tanglewood venue in Massachusetts. They were on the same bill along with the Voices of East Harlem in a show put together by famed promoter Bill Graham.
“I was both nervous and excited. He went out of his way to acknowledge that he liked my music. Miles was very gracious and respectful to me, and always was,” Santana says.
“I heard he had a potential for not always being so. But if he liked you, he liked you. If he didn’t like you, he would never like you! He just didn’t want to be around fake people. And he’d call me any time of day or night just to check out what I was doing! I was playing with a person who was a genius, genius, genius, genius!”
Sentient is just one of the projects keeping the 77-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Kennedy Center honoree busy. This month, he launches a U.S. tour that includes an April 23 show at Sugar Land’s Smart Financial Centre before another extended Las Vegas residency and then a string June dates in the UK and Europe.
There’s the lavish, life-and-career spanning coffee table book Carlos Santana: Love, Devotion, Surrender: A Visual Journey (Insight Editions) by Jeff Tamarkin coming out May 27. He was also the subject and main interviewee in the 2023 free-flowing documentary Carlos, and published his autobiography, The Universal Tone, back in 2014.
In Tamarkin’s book, the author estimates that there have been about 80 different lineups of Santana over the past nearly 60 years. So, we ask: Does the leader of the band know who is going to work out and who won’t—and when?
“I can only go by the moment. And I very grateful that musicians bring their lineage with them. Where they’re from. What I need is energy. A lot of light and a lot of love in [players]. One thing I learned from my father is the importance of melody,” he says.
“Melody is the opposite of walls. The walls of China or Berlin. It makes things calm down. Walls are built with the excuse of protection. But fear creates walls. And the walls are in the mind.”
Santana immediately switches to his environmental concerns and their effects, before winging back again to nations. “Planet Earth is alive now, and she’s shaking with greed and violence and brutality. And with all the shifting of the plates and the hurricanes, she’s trying to tell us something,” he continues.
“Don’t hit the brick wall with Russia, China, North Korea, and the Middle East and nuclear war. We need to be more like our angels than donkeys and monkeys at war with each other. I’m a hippie. And it takes courage to become a peaceful warrior. We need to transform the planet without weapons. And that’s what Sentient is about. More light, more hope, more courage.”
Finally, at any given Santana concert these days you can easily spot three generations of families sitting next to each other. That speaks to the longevity of Santana’s career. But what does the man himself think?
“It makes me feel very grateful. To feel a tangible oneness with people’s hearts, it has a lot to do with when I was a child and my dad. He had a way of putting the violin and playing and seeing kids or their grandparents dancing and smiling,” Santana sums up.
“That oneness and family. A collective hug. That’s what’s needed on this planet. A collective global hug. I know that’s what Woodstock was. When you hug, you get rid of fear. Love is the only thing that’s real. And we are one. We play music to bring unity and harmony. And I wake up every morning with enthusiasm to do it.”
Santana plays 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 23, at the Smart Financial Centre, 18111 Lexington. For more information, call 281-807-6278 or visit SmartFinancialCentre.net. $69.50 and up.
For more information on Santana, visit Santana.com
