SANTANA - Santana (1969)
Pre 70s prog, and how amazing!
Santana in Mexico is synonym of one of our most representative musicians, though he has lived almost his entired life in the US, his music was created in the US, Mexican people feel proud of having a Carlos Santana.
When i was like a 10-year kid i first listened to this album, as you can imagine it was my introduction to Santana's music, at that time i was not a real fan of music but anyways i found it quite enjoyable, then some years later i re-listened to it and really loved it. So this was actually (i had not realized about it) one of my first introductions to progressive rock music, with a latin and jazz oriented style, but anyway when we listen to this album we cannot argue about it being prog, i say this because i remember this was one of the endless controversials and nowadays non- stop additions to this site.
Santana's first and self titled album was released back in 1969 the same year when the progressive rock era according to a lot of people was born, with Crimson's debut. This album features 9 songs, in the remaster edition it has 3 extra songs which are live songs, the original one has a lenght of 35+ minutes, which may be short but when it's filled with great music, we can repeat it several times and enjoying it equally.
It opens with Waiting, an instrumental song which since the very first moments shows us a noticeable latin and jazzy style with those percussion instruments, very characteristic from Santana`s music. Evil Ways is one of my favourite Santana's song, first of all because it was the first one that really caught my attention when i was a kid, it's lyrics were the first ones my mind kept, and it's a well known song, as i said it's the first song of the album with lyrics,...
