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Santana: Africa Speaks

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Concord Records
Released: 2019.07.07
Time:
 64:25
Category: Latin Rock
Producer(s): See Artists ...
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.santana.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2020
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Africa Speaks (C.Santana/D.Axelrod/Buika) - 2:34
[2] Batonga (C.Santana/Buika) - 5:43
[3] Oye Este Mi Canto (C.Santana/Buika/J.Ademola Haastrup) - 5:58
[4] Yo Me Lo Merezco (C.Santana/Buika/J.U Xperience/Stoneface/D.Uboma) - 6:12
[5] Blue Skies (C.Santana/Buika/L.Mvula/M.Odumosu) - 9:08
[6] Paraísos Quemados (C.Santana/Buika/M.Jabry) - 5:59
[7] Breaking Down the Door (C.Santana/Manu Chao/Buika/D.Gonsalves/I.Duran/R.de Leon) - 4:30
[8] Los Invisibles (C.Santana/Buika/R.Taha/S.Hillage) - 5:54
[9] Luna Hechicera (C.Santana/Buika/I.Lô) - 4:47
[10] Bembele (C.Santana/Buika/Ph.Kullmann/B.Vuletic/M.T.Ehnes) - 5:51
[11] Candombe Cumbele (C.Santana/Buika/E.K.Brown) - 5:36

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Carlos Santana - Guitars, Percussion, Backing Vocals, Executive Producer, Conception, Arrangement & Musical Direction

Buika - Lead Vocals
Laura Mvula - Additional Vocals on [5]
David K. Mathews - Hammond B3 Organ, Keyboards
Salvador Santana - Keyboards on [7]
Tommy Anthony - Guitars, Musical GPS
Benny Rietveld - Bass Guitar
Cindy Blackman Santana - Drums
Karl Perazzo - Timbales, Congas, Percussion
Ray Greene - Trombone, Backing Vocals
Andy Vargas - Backing Vocals

Rick Rubin - Producer
Dana Nielsen - Mixing
Greg Fidelman - Engineer
Dana Nielsen - Engineer
Rob Bisel - Engineer
Sara Lynn Killion - Assistant Engineer
Dylan Neustadter - Assistant Engineer
Tyler Beans - Assistant Engineer
Jim Reitzel - Additional Engineer
Stephen Marcussen - Mastering
Dave Hanych - Production Coordination
Eric Lynn - Production Coordination
Colin Willard - Production Assistant
Jeremy Hatcher - Production Assistant
Garry Purchit - Production Assistant
Gabe Smith - Production Assistant
Chloe Poswillo - Production Assistant
Ethan Schneiderman - Production Assistant
Rudy Gutierrez - Artwork
Heather Griffin-Vine - Graphic Art

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded at the Shangri La Studios (Malibu, California) in 2019



Africa Speaks is the twenty-fifth studio album by American rock band Santana, released on June 7, 2019 by Concord Records and Suretone Records. The album was produced during a 10-day recording session by Rick Rubin at Rubin's Shangri La Studios in Malibu, during which they recorded 49 songs. Rubin and Carlos Santana used an eight-piece band (which included Santana's wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, on drums). The first single from the album, "Breaking Down the Door", was released on April 19, 2019. In January 2019, Santana released the EP In Search of Mona Lisa, which served as a preamble to the LP. The album debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200. Africa Speaks is the twenty-fifth studio album by American rock band Santana, released on June 7, 2019 by Concord Records and Suretone Records. The album was produced during a 10-day recording session by Rick Rubin at Rubin's Shangri La Studios in Malibu, during which they recorded 49 songs. Rubin and Carlos Santana used an eight-piece band (which included Santana's wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, on drums). The first single from the album, "Breaking Down the Door", was released on April 19, 2019. In January 2019, Santana released the EP In Search of Mona Lisa, which served as a preamble to the LP. The album debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200.

Africa Speaks was released on June 7, 2019 by Concord Records and Suretone Records. In the United States, it debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and at number one on Top Latin Albums with 57,000 equivalent album units. It also became the Latin album with most sales in a single week since Romeo Santos' Formula, Vol. 2 in March 2014, as well as the best-performing week for a Spanish-language record since Billboard began to rank albums based on equivalent units in late 2014. It has also ranked at number one on the Latin Albums Sales chart for 13 consecutive weeks between June 22 and September 14, 2019. Africa Speaks was the best-selling Latin album of the first half of 2019 in the United States, with 63,000 copies sold as of June 20.

Santana was set to headline in August 2019 at both Woodstock 50 and Bethel Woods' half-centennial celebration in Bethel, NY. Prior and before, the band is touring in support of the new album, from April to November 2019. However, Woodstock 50 was canceled due to permit issues.

wikipedia.org



No matter the numerous musical terrains Santana have traversed since the late 1960s, their trademark Afro-Latin sound is so recognizable it often dominates the band's material. Not here; on Africa Speaks that sound is just one among many - some tunes here are almost unrecognizable as Santana). Produced by Rick Rubin, Africa Speaks was compiled from a whopping 49 songs, all recorded over ten days at Shangri-La in Malibu - many in a single take - most inspired by African melodies and polyrhythms. Throughout, the Santana octet is on fire, fronted by Spain's inimitable force of nature Concha Buika, a singer, songwriter, poet, and producer. She is so versatile, she's been nominated for Latin Grammys in several genres, and is equally adept at flamenco, jazz, soul, funk, and Anglo-Latin and Afro-pop.

Conga drums introduce Carlos' brief spoken narration to the title cut; his stinging guitar joins with Buika's pained modal moan in Andalus flamenco style in an improvised percussion-rippled interlude. A walloping Afro-Cuban bata rhythm precedes "Baytonga" before the band kick in with biting guitar riffs, Benny Reitveld's whomping bass line, Cindy Blackman Santana's rolling tom-toms (this set provides some of the finest drumming in her long career), and Karl Perazzo's congas. Buika, Andy Vargas, and Ray Greene chant as a choir countering David K. Mathews' fiery piano montunos toward a cascading crescendo. Driving, unfettered, bass-wrangling Afro-Latin funk fuels "Oye Este Mi Canto" and the single "Los Invisibles" as Buika's forceful vocals exhort, plead, and declare (the former also offers a scorching Mathews B-3 solo). Buika is a rock singer on "Yo Me Lo Merezco," as entwined guitar leads, fingerpicked chords, and the straight-on 4/4 rhythm section plod morphs to halve its time signature, becoming an unfettered jam where Carlos and Rietveld play head to head. (Look for it to become much longer live.) Laura Mvula guests on the simmering jazz-blues nocturne "Blue Skies," trading verses with co-composer Buika. "Breaking Down the Door," is a humid cumbia with Buika and a chorus relating a murder ballad while indicting patriarchy and class division. It's adorned by trombone breaks and accordion fills. "Luna Hechicera," is another fusion tune where rumba, jazz, and funk commingle and writhe as exquisite instrumental dialogues occur under Buika's soulful singing. "Bembele" is a Latin jazz groover that finds Carlos quoting from "Song of the Wind" (off 1972's Caravanserai) in his solo, with Buika's expressive vocal soaring and swooping in time to the rhythm section.
Africa Speaks is breathtaking in terms of energy and scope of vision. Here, the Santana band are - more than at any time since the mid-'70s run of Caravanserai, Welcome, Lotus, and Borboletta - a rangy, intense, restless, and musically hungry outfit aware of their potential. Africa Speaks is the surprise of 2019, the album Carlos has been desiring to make for decades but was unable to given contract restrictions - Concord offered complete artistic freedom. He, Buika, and the Santana band made the most of it.

Thom Jurek - AllMusic.com



The heated pop and slap of congas that opens the title track of Santana’s Africa Speaks conjure memories of the vintage likes of 1970’s atmospheric Abraxas, a favorable impression that solidifies over the course of the sixty-plus minutes that follows. It’s a far cry from the commercial likes of 1999’s Supernatural with its mainstream hit “Smooth,” and the stable lineup of Santana’s current group (including mainstays in the persons of bassist Benny Rietveld and percussionist Karl Perazzo) mitigates the absence of the original members who reunited in 2016.

The group’s playing echoing the sound of the early Santana band without seeming to self-consciously ape it and as on that opener, blistering guitar figures from the namesake bandleader foreshadow his own disciplined playing throughout this record. “Batonga” rolls out in much the same fashion and highlights the main distinction between Santana past and present, that is, the lead vocals: group chants are almost as prominent as the lead vocals of Buika, but her mellifluous tones on “Oye Este Mi Canto,” for instance, add to the exotic atmosphere created in part by largely Spanish lyrics (the translation of which would be an inclusive gesture)

The mesmerizing effect that results is more or less consistent over the course of Africa Speaks’ entire playing time, an impact amplified by the audio presence as recorded at producer Rick Rubin’s Shangri-la studio (originally built for use by Bob Dylan and the Band) and mastered by the expert Stephen Marcussen. Another facet of this record reminiscent of classic Santana albums like III, the mix somewhat surprisingly sublimates Cindy Blackman Santana’s drumming at her kit, but “Paradisos Quemados” reveals how her playing supplies ballast for the fluid movements of the rest of the ensemble.

One of the more conventional rock tunes here (like all eleven numbers an original piece), “Yo Me Lo Merezco” benefits from the depth and clarity of the sound:  electric guitar chords melt in and out of David K. Matthews’ Hammond B3 organ. It’s a tribute to Carlos’ overriding humility that, on arrangements of cuts like that and “Blue Skies,”  he shares the instrumental prominence with the keyboardist, whose piano is as much the center of gravity of the latter performance as the instrument of Santana’s. The tranquility of the closing passages conjured by these two bandmates is quite the dramatic foil for the tempestuous dual guitars immediately preceding and a welcome change of pace for an album that by its very uniformity threatens to become monotonous just past the half-way point.

The appearance of Ray Greene’s trombone is thus all the more welcome on “Breaking Down the Door” and “Los Invisibles;” close to unobtrusive, the sound of the horn nonetheless adds a novel texture to further highlight how the lead singing on Africa Speaks becomes an instrument unto itself. Clearly the collaboration between Carlos Santana and producer Rubin, the man who co-founded Def Jam Records (and has worked with the disparate likes of Run DMC, Slayer and Tom Petty) is a mutually fruitful one, because right through to the conclusion, “Candome Cumbele,” this record sounds all the more potent for its cooperative focus.

Doug Collette - June 6, 2019
Copyright © 2020 Glide Magazine



Santana launched their career half a century ago with a cover of Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji’s “Jingo” and now, for their 25th album, they’ve created a love letter to Africa. Although Africa Speaks sounds undeniably like a Santana album, with Carlos’ fiery guitar bursts and reedy-voiced singer Buika’s Spanish-language exclamaciones, it explodes from the start with African rhythms and a unique freedom to the way the group plays the songs.

With the exceptions of “Breaking Down the Door,” a faithful cover of the Manu Chao–penned Calypso Rose song “Abatina,” the catchy “Batonga,” and the alt-rock–leaning “Yo Me Lo Meresco,” the tracks on Africa Speaks unfold more like jazz tunes, finding their way as they go. The title song, which starts with Carlos speaking with his voice instead of his guitar for once, saying, “all and everything was conceived here in Africa, the cradle of civilization,” and expands slowly, picking up the pace, adding some percussion, spotlighting Buika’s voice, like a musical birth.

And while Buika is at the forefront on each of the songs, Carlos Santana’s guitar is still the most important voice. On “Oya Este Mi Canto,” the percussion picks up the pace halfway through and Santana’s guitar erupts with wah-wah fury. “Paraísos Quemados” is a funky guitar showcase that allows Carlos to make his instrument stutter and cry before it even kicks into gear. And on “Luna Hechicera,” he slowly wraps his melodies around Buika’s until the instrumental break where he plays call-and-response phrases before making his guitar hum under Buika’s voice when she comes back. Fifty years after his “Soul Sacrifice” made hippies’ jaws drop all over Woodstock, Carlos Santana’s guitar playing remains a force of nature.

It’s that raw inspiration that makes Africa Speaks compelling. The group reportedly recorded some 49 songs over a 10-day session with producer Rick Rubin and picked 11 to finish off for Africa Speaks; the record is just the songs they that moved them right then and there. And for that reason, Africa Speaks is not the sort of record to listen to on headphones; you have to hear the way it springs forth from speakers, like a live performance, to fully appreciate it. There aren’t any Billboard-targeting hits here — there’s no “Smooth” or even an “Oye Como Va,” though “Breaking Down the Door” comes close — and that’s part of the appeal. Woodstock was 50 years ago; this is Santana now. The spirit is the same, yet somehow it’s even freer.

Kory Grow - rollingstone.com
 

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