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Santana to show spirit in Jakarta
Carlos Santana: Courtesy of Java Jazz FestivalCarlos Santana’s voice travels through the phone line in low-pitched waves and orotund timbres from his New York hotel, a contrast to his guitar’s porcelain-tone staccato runs and trills, the voice we all know him for
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Carlos Santana: Courtesy of Java Jazz Festival
Carlos Santana’s voice travels through the phone line in low-pitched waves and orotund timbres from his New York hotel, a contrast to his guitar’s porcelain-tone staccato runs and trills, the voice we all know him for.
The sound produced by a guitar, he says, is enchanting. “There’s a resonance and there’s a vibration to it that makes people feel significant, meaningful. You can listen to a guitar and be reminded that you’re doing something of worth on this planet,” Carlos told The Jakarta Post. “Because its sound travels directly to your heart.”
Santana is set to perform at the 2011 Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival at the Jakarta International Expo Center from March 4-5 as part of its tour to Southeast Asia to promote its latest album, Guitar Heaven, which covers guitar classics with other established artists such as Scott Welland from the Rolling Stones and Chris Cornell from Led Zeppelin.
“To create these songs, it took an incredible amount of trust — from Howard Benson and from Matt Serletic — and all these incredible singers, all these incredible musicians. They had to trust me, and I trusted [my manager] Clive [Davis]. So it’s a chain reaction of love, because that’s the highest form of love that there is on this planet: Trust.”
He said he was looking forward to his Jakarta gig, for one, because of the familial value that Indonesia embraces. “The negative part of America is that it is fixated on those aged between 17 and 27,” he told the Post. “America doesn’t invite older people or children to these kind of things. And I don’t believe in that. I believe in the whole family — grandparents, parents, teenagers and children.”
Mexican-American Carlos Santana was born in Mexico in 1947 into a musical family — his father was a violinist and his brother Jorge Santana another professional guitarist. Following this quavered path, he embraced his music teacher’s unique guitar techniques, appropriating them further, and committed himself to slogging it out as a full-time musician.
Barely in his 20s, when asked to fill in at a gig for an inebriated guitarist, he was given the exposure he needed to impel himself down what became a musical tornado: The band Santana, which he created and led with guitar, distinct from other bands of the time with its salsa-jazz-rock-African rhythms fusion. A well-received performance at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 resulting in a signing with Columbia Records was enough to ensure no turning back.
Santana’s atypical genre, evoking freedom and ethereality through unrestrained, expressive forms — polytechnic, syncopated beats — mirrored Carlos Santana’s own journey that skipped away from the constraints of an industrialized world, transcending into spirituality. Years on, Carlos continues to foster his spirituality and hopes to nourish others’ through his music.
“It’s important to pollinate vibrations of unity and harmony and equality, because sometimes
people become too involved in fear and violence and brutality, and it’s important to be the opposite of that.
“The opposite of fear is love. The opposite of violence is gentleness, the opposite of brutality is compassion,” he said, adding that music could generate these peaceful antonyms.
Carlos’ irenic efforts have been notable, most recently gaining respect from the global community for disapproving of Israel’s violation of international human rights laws toward Arab-Palestinians by participating in a cultural boycott on the state, canceling his concert there in June last year.
The topic of human rights abuse may seem all a bit too close to home. Escalating religious violence in
Indonesia has concerned humanitarian activists in the country and abroad following the recent deadly attacks on the discriminated Ahmadiyah sect of Islam in Cikeusik, Banten. Then there was the church burning in Temanggung, Central Java, after a man charged with blasphemy for reported anti-Islamic writing received a five-year prison sentence, which was deemed too light by court crowds.
“We can say it very clearly: If you believe in a God, or whatever other form that might be for you, you must believe in love and compassion. If you believe in a God who wants violence and revenge, that’s not God.”
While he may be able to provide philosophical relevance, some question if Santana’s music is still able to provide the same appositeness, especially with its late tendency to produce albums only in collaboration with other, newer musicians.
After a quiet late 1980s-early 1990s period, Carlos with Clive Davis created afresh in 1999 with the album, Supernatural, joining with contemporary artists such as Matchbox 20 in the Latin-rock song Smooth. Santana’s 2002 album, Shaman, continued this trend, an album best known for its sprightly The Game of Love song with vocalist Michelle Branch. Carlos, however, suggests he’s only reinventing the wheel.
“There are not too many artists from the 1960s or Woodstock who can play with today’s artists and make a significant contribution,” he said. “You know, most people want to stay at a certain level, they are nostalgic. But it is important to put in place freshness.”
There have not been too many artists, either, known as vanguards of music without vocalist status. Vocalist-less Santana has for 40 years since its inception stolen the public’s ears, releasing 21 studio, seven live, 32 singles and 21 compilation albums, four of which reached the Billboard charts – Abraxas, Santana III, Supernatural and Shaman.
To ensure newness, Carlos says, you must allow yourself to dream, upon which these thoughts can then manifest, which in turn produces the energy required for intentions to become reality.
“I dream when I’m awake, and I dreamed, I wondered what it would be like to do something with say, [master cellist] Yo Yo Ma and vocalist India Arie,” he said, referring to his recent collaboration with the pair to appropriate George Harrison’s sensuous While my Guitar Gently Weeps.
“So I dream. And it becomes reality.”
The Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival is organized by Java Festival Production.
To buy tickets, you can visit Java Jazz Festival’s online purchase system: http://www.javajazzfestival.com/2011/ticketonlineorder.php or you can call the hotline on (+62) 838 8080 888 or (+62 21) 968 10022/23. For a list of box offices you can visit: http://www.javajazzfestival.com/2011/ticketbox.php.
