Viva Santana! - Santana

It'll be hard for most present day listeners to comprehend how unusual Santana appeared when they first emerged in 1969 and became stars in 1970-71. The interracial band line-up was itself a big deal. Blacks and whites weren't getting together then, or if they were, they weren't playing rock, they were playing funk and soul (Santana would of course play plenty of funk and soul in its later days). And plenty of rock bands were experimenting with jazz in the late '60s - but only in the sense of improvising more, without actually learning from jazz, and extending their harmonic and rhythmic reach, as Santana did. They were creating a jazz-rock fusion, and what's more a ...  Read the complete review