Carlos Santana: To me, the song primarily is the groove, which is the heart. If you have an incredible groove, who cares about the intro and the bridge and the end and the verses and the chorus? That’s what I like the best about Talking Heads’ Remain in Light. Those songs don’t sound like songs; they sound like straight-ahead grooves.
Jas Obrecht: With so many instruments, do you have an arranger for the band?
Carlos: No. I basically arrange. For new songs, I try to arrange and break it down so that people don’t get too much cholesterol from either melody or rhythm. I try to balance it out, so that there’s valleys and there’s mountains, so it’s not too intense or frenetic. It’s like making love. There’s got to be tension and release, tension and release.
Jas: What percent of rehearsal time should be spent actually playing music?
Carlos: From the morning when you walk in until you leave. I feel like a fish in water, man, when the music is right, and that’s what I try to go for in rehearsals. It kills me when people have to stop the groove a lot. So the main thing I teach people is the groove— “This is how it goes.” Let me hear what the drummer and bass player are doing, and then I bring in the congas.
Sometimes people can be a little bit too clever for you. They’ll just disguise what they don’t know by just playing a lot. I say, “No, no, no. When I want you to play, really play it. But what I want you to really do is hold the groove.” Wayne Shorter and I were talking about this. We want to lay a groove down so Wynton Marsalis to the guy with the green mohawk hair can get off behind it, because then you will hit everything in between. To me, again, the most important thing is the groove.
August 24, 1988, Jas Obrecht Interview
Photo by Maryanne Bilham
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