Santana and Traditional Music

Santana and Traditional Music

Santana

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• Santana first rose to prominence in the late 1960's for their fusion of rock music with Latin American rhythms and instrumental groupings.
• They had a very distinctive sound that fused together melodic, blues based guitar playing with Latin and African based rhythms, largely captured by the use of percussion instruments such as congas and timbales not normally found in rock music at that time.
• They were also inspired by blues players such as B.B. King, John Lee-Hooker, Jimi Hendrix, Peter Green, Mike Bloomfield and Hank Marvin.

Background

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• Carlos Santana, founder of the band, was born in Autlan de Navarro, Jalisco, Mexico and started his musical journey at a very young age, taking up violin at the age of five.
• Santana’s father was frequently absent during his early years and eventually the family moved to Tijuana, a city right on the Mexican/Californian border before finally settling in San Francisco.
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• This movement and exposure to different musical cultures was clearly instrumental in helping Santana forge his own unique and individual style in the 60s and 70s.

"Supernatural"

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• Supernatural was released in 1999.
• The album is one of the bestselling albums in the world, reaching number 1 in many countries and selling over 30 million copies.
• Unlike most of Santana’s previous albums, this one is a little more unusual in that it contains different artists, mainly vocal, on different tracks.
• It is often argued that the album lacks unity and cohesion because the musical styles and artists, particularly the singers, are so diverse.
• Of course it could also be argued that this diversity is the album’s strength because there is great variety in the musical content.
• The three tracks selected for study exemplify this diversity; Love of My Life, Smooth and Migra.