As Carlos Santana evolves musically and spiritually—for the time being the two paths seem to be one—he chooses his associates more carefully. The demands of the music he conceives are dictating his personnel and the Santana band has become, for recording purposes, an aegis under which various players perform. Borboletta and Illuminations are noteworthy
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for their rhythm sections. Bassist David Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette, who sparked Miles Davis's late Sixties band, are on the latter album, while
Borboletta includes Stanley Clarke and Airto Moreira (who played together with Gato Barbieri and in the first edition of Chick Corea's Return to Forever), jazz drummer Mdugu, and Santana standbys David Brown, Michael Shrieve, Armando Peraza and Chepito Areas.
Saxophonist Jules Broussard and keyboardman Tom Coster share most of the solo space on Borboletta with Carlos, and their instrumental features are the LP's high points. "Aspirations," composed by Santana and Coster, is a shimmering, guitarless piece with Coster, Broussard, Clarke and Mdugu. Most of the second side achieves a high-flying groove that combines some of the old Santana band's strongest qualities—rhythmic drive, thematic variation—with Carlos's imaginative soloing and the sophisticated contributions of Broussard, Coster and percussionist Mdugu, Airto and Peraza. As on previous albums "Here and Now," "Flor de Canela" and "Promise of a Fisherman" flow together into a suite, building from a lyrical guitar solo into the relentless Afro-Brazilian rhythms of Dorival Caymmi's "Fisherman." The scattershot approach of Welcome and the self-indulgence of some of the playing on Love Devotion Surrender have been trimmed away, leaving 15 minutes of instrumental excellence.
The rest of the LP, Airto's introduction and coda excepted, suffers by comparison. Leon Patillo's vocals are merely adequate and the lyrics, mostly by Santana, Shrieve and Patillo, are sincere but simplistic cosmic drivel. As advertisements for the inner peace to be found through various forms of meditation they are none too convincing, especially since the same message comes across clearly and without pretense in the accomplished instrumentals. Inner experience, nonverbal by nature, isn't easily communicated in words; at this point Santana probably should dispense with lyrics altogether.
The entirely instrumental Illuminations is Carlos's most ambitious project to date. And it is very much his: Alice Coltrane provided string arrangements and plays harp and keyboards but with the exception of her brief "Bliss: The Eternal Now" all the compositions are by Santana and Coster. Some of them tend toward the soporific with long atempo string passages and slow, blissed-out guitar melodies, but the sidemen and Turiya's resourcefulness as an arranger inject enough fire to avoid tedium. The absence of a drum kit on most selections is compe
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