Review of Santana's Abraxas

Released1970

"Is that you, your eyes slowly fading? Is that you, your mind full of tears? Is that you, searching for a good time? Is that you, waitin' for all these years?"

One of the real pleasures in undertaking this blog is that when I sit down to write a review, I invariably put the album on in the background and for reasons which I can't quite explain, I somehow listen to it with a slightly different disposition and, more often than not find that my musical appreciation is deepened in the process. That's very true of Abraxas. Whilst I've had a fondness from day one, it is highly pleasurable to be newly surprised and excited by an album I've had for many years and heard many, many times.

One night not long before I left home for University, I hired two VHS videos: Woodstock and The Song Remains The Same. Call me a sad old hippy, but I remember that night with great fondness and developed a deeper affiliation for the late sixties / early seventies period. If truth be told, I fast forwarded through much of the non-musical segments of the Woodstock film, but, amongst the many highlights, I was significantly struck by the performance of the very young and fresh faced Santana's Soul Sacrifice. I now know that their exhilarating performance on Max Yasgur's farm shot them to instant fame and fortune and deservedly so.

I came across copies of both their debut album and Abraxas on the same day, but picked the latter on the basis of the cover art - still one of my favourite all time covers - even though the former had Soul Sacrifice amongst it's listings. Looking back, this was probably also due to the fact that, at the time, my Fleetwood Mac collection was growing and I was certainly familiar with Santana's cover of Black Magic Woman.

The opening track - Singing Winds, Crying Beasts - superbly set the scene with it's genre mashing mix of Latino rhythms, howling guitar, jazz inflected piano and extraterrestrial percussion. The lead guitar was possibly the least deployed instrument on this track, washing from ear to ear with wonderful restraint.

The aforementioned Black Magic Woman, for my money, falls into the very small category were the cover improves on the original. Along with Jimi Hendrix's version of All Along The Watch Tower and Joe Cocker's Woodstock version of With A Little Help From My Friends, Santana 's version of this track takes an already excellent song and takes it to another level entirely. I'm not sure if a term has been coined to describe the resulting musical form for Santana's interpretation of this blues track. As such, this for me immediately earns it prog rock status.

Incident At Neshabur is another track which may easily have been overlooked by prog fans; under the Latino percussiveness which one would expect from a Mexican rock band, I've always suspected that the interplay between the keyboards and guitar was largely improvised, veering from Hammond to piano, from jazz drum brushes to feedback laden guitar; always exciting and unpredictable.

Whilst most other predominantly instrumental albums were, at lease to start with, a challenging listen, the sparseness of the vocals on Abraxas went almost unnoticed, such was the energy and variety on show.

At the risk of repeating myself, I always felt that my habitual wearing of headphones went a long way to enhancing my love for much of the music I listened to at this time. I don't mean the terrible things you stick in your ears today when plugged into an ipod, but the large ungainly objects that completely surrounded each ear. Try listening to the intro of Hope Your Feeling Better With headphones of this time and tell me that you are not stunned by the difference: a participant in the experience rather than a bystander.

The debate over how to define prog will never be settled. However, I find it invigorating that the genre encapsulates the existential gloom that is Van Der Graaf Generator, the mellow stoner rock of Pink Floyd as well as the uplifting and buoyant Santana.