Musical Experiences

Like a piece to the puzzle that falls into place
You could tell how we felt from the look on our faces
We was spinning in circles with the moon in our eyes
No room left to move in between you and I
We forgot where we were and we lost track of time
And we sang to the wind as we danced through the night

“You have to be brave to be happy”
That’s what Carlos said. And then there was generosity and peace, passion and self-worth. There was love and kindness. There was probably trust and respect as well.
These were his words and they are ours too.

There’s no denying or escaping the reality of shared values, vision, passion and commitment to lovingkindness and getting the world to see how a smile and a dash of love could make all the difference.

He spoke of the potential in each and every one of us and that given the right circumstances, there is good in everyone and if we just unite that goodness in small every day things, the world would be a better place.
Love” or should it have been “Light and Life”?
In some ways it doesn’t really matter what the words were. It was the unity

He encouraged the audience to chant a short mantra of belief. “I am Light and Love, Light and Love” and at that moment, I assume there were many in the building who felt that light and love; who had the rhythmic beat of the bongos embedded in their brains, in tune with the pumping of their own hearts, recognising the synergy of sound that re-emphasised the words that Carlos was encouraging us to say.

Did I hear him properly? Did he say “Light and Love” or was it “Life and that was important and the positivity and the togetherness. It wasn’t even the words that was enabling that either. It was the shared joy and appreciation of the sounds we were listening to. As chanting can sometimes do, it was there to direct people to the sound and the feeling that encapsulates rather than the actual words.

However, Santana believes. And he believes that he has found something beautiful in life that he wants to share with a listening world; Light and Love.
“I’m still an old hippy” he said.
And thank goodness for that! Thank goodness there are people out there in their sixties who still have the vision, still understand the astounding effects that music can have on the psyche, still accept, albeit regretfully, that there is a world out there that still needs correcting some forty years later.

Santana was born in 1966, the same year as me.
Obviously Carlos Santana wasn’t born then – he pre-dates me chronologically!
Santana the performer first got up there and was noticed in 1966. It was as I took my first breath that he walked his intrepid steps to stardom. However, with Carlos Santana, it almost appears to be a reluctant stardom. He wants to play music before he wants to show off! He appears to want to share the passion rather than keep it all for himself and it is this that nurtures his desire to perform rather than the notion of being seen as some iconic guitarist that indeed he is.

Santana feels.
And if you are in a room with him, without being all starry eyed, you can feel too, if you open yourself up to absorb the feeling.

I count myself extremely fortunate to have experienced what I did last night.
Last year I noticed that Santana was playing at the o2 and I wasn’t sure whether to get tickets or not. Like other concerts before, I didn’t feel as though I knew enough about the artist to justify taking a valuable space from a real fan; someone who had followed Santana all of their lives. I didn’t want to be a pop tourist.
This year however, I felt that I was ‘ready’ for him. As I continue along my pathway of learning, Santana had crept surreptitiously into my playlists on Spotify, and more and more I was losing myself into the incredible synergising of heavy rock with salsa and jazz.
Tell me please, how the hell does that work?
I use the word “into” rather than “in” deliberately because you don’t just dabble at the edges of the shore when you are listening to Santana. You have to get straight into those crashing waves, well I do anyway. I’m not really one for half measures.

The man and his incredible group of musicians did not disappoint. From the moment that he stood on stage, almost creeping on without any need or desire for a roaring introduction from an anonymous maitre de booming out of the speakers, Carlos Santana dominated.
His fingers dance around that guitar board and only the incredibly reserved could not take on the rhythm and beat of this intensely passionate music.

A few months ago, I was travelling up the M1 without a CD in my car; never a good thing when the play on Radio Four is not to your liking. I switched over to Radio Two and was pleasantly surprised by two things. Firstly, the guest in the studio was a very frank and open Roger Daltry, who is always worth a listen to, and the featured album was Abraxas. I think it was this point that I really decided that Santana was for me.
Like many musical experiences, it is always wonderful to be able to share a passion but real musical learning and appreciation has to come from your soul and not the soul of another. Obviously, introductions are important and tasters need to be provided in order for a person to develop an interest of their own but sometimes it needs another trigger from an independent source to stimulate and reiterate the suggestion from another.

For me, this is what happened with Santana. I had been introduced to him, although obviously I knew about him before. In fact my first experience of Santana must have been when I saw him on the television on 13th July 1985 during Live Aid.
Following on from that, there were various mini-introductions to Santana and plenty of opportunities to listen to his music but it wasn’t until I listened to Abraxas that day that he was mine rather than me parasitically borrowing him from someone else.

In writing this piece, I do not profess to be an avid fan who knows every song, every lyric, each word, each musical form but I am perfectly able to appreciate and absorb what I hear without knowing every nuance.
Santana came onto the stage and wowed. He didn’t, as I said, make some grand gesture of appearance. He did what he does best to introduce himself to the awaiting audience.
He played his guitar.
Simple.

As if!
There is nothing simple about Santana. Here is a definite case of polar opposites. There is a complexity in playing the guitar and Carlos manages to make it look as though it is the simplest thing in the world. You watch him play and you feel as though all you would have to do is pick up the instrument and allow your fingers to skip and slide across the strings. Simple!
Even when he played “Chim Chim Cheree” he put a complexity into a song that is all too familiar.
And the clarity of each single note was exceptional, truly exceptional.
To anyone who has ever attempted to play a guitar, you know that simplicity does not just happen. Fingers fumble, pressure on the strings is either insipid or too full of strength. Balance is essential and perfecting the placement on the neck is vital for the sort of sound you want.
There is nothing simple about playing any stringed instrument and to suggest anything contrary is wrong, just plain wrong.

Within seeming minutes, Santana, the band, were bashing out “Black Magic Woman” which was a delight to have so early in the concert, especially as I was expecting this to be saved for the encore. More infamous tracks followed with each of the twelve musicians (if you include the next Mrs Santana) displaying the most incredible musical proficiency on each of their chosen instruments. The brass pairing slid the trombone into perfect position and deposited the most immense sounds out of a miked-up trumpet that brashly yet tunefully reached the ears of the audience.
The singers had their own distinct voices and ability and rocked along in tandem with the others, shaking their shakers and baring their souls in the love of the music and admiration for their leader.
The keyboard player mesmerised me. I was almost choked by the audacity of the sound that he was creating from the Hammond. Actually, that is not true. I was choked. I could feel the build up of emotive response in my throat as I listened in complete awe and envy at how his fingers made swift and perfect contact with each intended note. Tears welled and soon I had to reach to my eyes to gently mop the gathering waters waiting to cascade once more.
I really am hopeless!

Santana himself was, in some ways, as expected.
I expected nothing less than brilliance and that is what I got. Sixty three years of man walked up and down the stage, kicking his leg occasionally in the air as the music got the better of him.
He has an elegance about him which oozes as much passion as the more obvious showmanship of someone like Townshend. Quiet passion perhaps is a better phrase. Elegance implies refinement and one of the most wonderful things about Santana is that he has not allowed himself or his music to become refined; smoothed in any way.
Although I was but a mere baby in the Sixties, I would assume that the music performed by Santana now is as raw and gale-like as it was in the decade of evolving Enlightenment.
Words that I write could not possibly convey the silkiness of tone that could not possibly be described as silky by virtue of the solidity of sound. It really is quite indescribable.

For me, one of the highlights of the evening was the utter incredulity that I felt or experienced when listening to the drummers; each of them exceptional in their chosen form of percussion.
It always fascinates me when people are so dismissive of percussion players or drummers (obviously excluding Phil Collins in this!) But seriously, even the Genesis man knew how to make the most of the drums and they are the heartbeat of a band. Without the drums, the soul cannot sing.
In the Eighties and Nineties, bands had this horrible propensity for playing backing track beats that were computer generated or pre-recorded.
Horrible, horrible sounds that could not possibly match the thunderous boom of a real hand or stick on a skin.
A friend of mine suggested that I get tickets for Buddy Rich in the late Seventies or early Eighties. I was quite dismissive and wondered how on earth anyone could spend an entire evening listening to a drummer. I wish I had listened more closely to Fred. I should have gone to see the Master then as he sadly died a few years later.

Last night, I suppose I paid my silent tribute to Buddy Rich by affording the drummer’s the sort of respect that I should have given to him over thirty years ago. I listened intently and allowed my soul to be marched and tossed and thumped into submission. I walked the walk with every stamp of the hand, with every bang of the stick, with every clever, metronomic tick of the feet on the bass drum. It was utterly incredible; a word that I know I overuse as much as the word ‘brilliance’ but what more can I say?
I was pounding, they were pounding and the audience sat in stupefied hypnosis at the beat that was virtually dragging them to the stage to participate.

Of course, the audience does participate with the singing. There was a relatively young bloke sitting behind me for instance bellowing out “Into the Night” and “Maria Maria”. The woman to my left was reliving her youth and was totally absorbed in responding to the music in the way that she felt most comfortable with, which was to rock her head back and forth and take it all in.
Audience participation is quite an individual thing until the drums start, and like the Pied Piper, we all follow, unaware of the conformity because to us, the drum is beating for one person alone. It’s quite an amazing thing.

And before I finish, I must mention the audience.
One of the most blissful moments for me last night was when a whiter light appeared and flashed subtly around the audience for all to see the participation and engagement for themselves.
Clearly the audience was older than your average Green Day mob but that did not mean those congregated were all of the more mature generation. And even the oldies, could not sit still. They rocked and ‘salsa’ed without any regard for slightly less able limbs. They ignored their growing bellies and jiggled around as the only right and proper response to such music.
Some jumped up and down with hands raised in appreciation, others swayed with eyes closed, others moved from side to side but barely no-one stood still.

It makes you wonder just how much Enlightenment and love could be achieved by simply sharing musical experiences like this.
I adored watching inhibitions disappear. At one point, I looked down towards the floor where everyone was on their feet. A beer-bellied man who did not look as though he was the most passionate man in the world was swaying away with beer in one hand, utterly oblivious to anyone except the band and the music that he was responding to. He didn’t give a damn who was watching. There wouldn’t have been a problem if he was out of time because this was about his relationship with the music and nobody else mattered.
Looking around, he was not alone. There were people all over that floor lost in a world that was particular to themselves. Suddenly all that horribly pompous British reserve disappeared. Spanish Salsa and Latin Jazz had taken over their lives and they were allowing it to do so.
Shouldn’t that be happening all of the time? Shouldn’t we open up all of the time to such brilliance that can capture a part of your soul that no other form of art can do?

Yesterday, I was listening to Woman’s Hour and someone asked whether you could truly experience intense love at a time of grief. Jenny Murray asked the two people in the studio how you could possibly feel such strong emotions simultaneously. Could you, for instance, really feel a new love at precisely the same time as you were mourning for a lost love?
I think you can. It is not a shock or a surprise that this is feasible. The reason? Because if you can experience intense emotions, then you can experience intense emotions! It is the intensity and not the extreme that is important. If one experiences passion in one form, then it is probably more likely that they feel a strength of passion in another setting or with another stimulus. Hence love and grief can go hand in hand.
That is why I can open my mouth in mesmerised awe at the spectacle of something like a Santana concert whilst simultaneously crying my eyes dry.

You have to be brave to be happy, he said. Maybe there is a bravery in being able to be passionate and being unashamed in reacting to beauty in what some might say is a contradictory way.
I know one thing for definite though. Yesterday, I was very, very happy.

Light and Love is not a bad mantra, after all.