Over the decades, Carlos Santana has collaborated with jazz legends (Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter), rock guitarists (Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan), blues greats (Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker), R&B singers (Smokey Robinson, Lauryn Hill), and even country artists (Willie Nelson, Faith Hill). The results were sometimes worldwide hits like “Smooth” (with Rob Thomas) or “Maria Maria” (with Wyclef Jean), but others fell between the cracks and never found the audience they deserved.
His new compilation album, Sentient (out March 28), tries to fix this by taking overlooked collaborations with Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, Smokey Robinson, Paolo Rustichelli, and wife and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, and placing them all together, along with three recordings that have never been heard before. “It always goes around and comes around to grace, God’s grace,” Santana tells Rolling Stone. “I live in Las Vegas, but I don’t believe in luck and chance or fortune. I believe in grace. And by grace, I’m able to have imagination and creativity and a heart that has a magnet that attracts people to me. And can you believe all these songs are on one album?”
The album begins with “Let the Guitar Play,” featuring Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. The song dates back to Santana’s 2021 instrumental “Song for Cindy,” but it’s reimagined here by producer Lino Nicolosi and Narada Michael Walden, along with the Run-DMC rapper. “Rap is the music of today,” says Santana. “In the Fifties it was Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley. But now it’s rap. It’s been rap for a while, and it’s not going away. It’s going to get more intense, more beautiful. And DMC has the perfect voice and perfect message for this song.”
It continues with an instrumental rendition of Jackson’s 1995 deep cut “Stranger in Moscow,” which Santana recorded in 2007 with producer/drummer Walden’s band at the San Rafael, California, club New George’s. “We didn’t even rehearse it,” Santana says. “I just showed up, played it, and imagined that my fingers were the voice of Michael Jackson.”
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“Stranger in Moscow” segues directly into “Whatever Happens,” a track from Jackson’s 2001 Invincible LP featuring Santana on guitar. He also whistles the opening notes. “I love the music of Cape Verde,” Santana recalls. “It’s very romantic. And so I started whistling a kind of Cape Verde theme, showed it to Michael, and he liked it so much that he left it on the song as the intro.”
Jackson’s fellow Motown alum Robinson asked Santana to play guitar on his 2009 tune “Please Don’t Take Your Love,” and an alternate take from those sessions appears on Sentient. “I admire Smokey Robinson like crazy,” Santana says. “When I heard he had a song that he wanted me to play on, I started stuttering. I was just really, really grateful. And I recorded it before he got to the studio. To my great surprise, he really liked it. There’s a theme in there that I snapped in from ‘Prince of Darkness’ by Miles Davis. It fit in really well.”
Davis is one of Santana’s all-time music heroes. And thanks to Italian jazz-rock composer and producer Paolo Rustichelli, he had the opportunity to appear alongside Davis on Rustichelli’s songs “Get On” and “Rastafario.” It all stemmed from a phone call Santana received from Wayne Shorter’s wife, Ana Maria Shorter, a few years before she died in the 1996 plane crash of TWA flight 800.
“She said, ‘Carlos, there’s a guy named Paolo Rusticelli. He’s like the Quincy Jones of Rome,’” Santana says. “‘He wrote some music for Miles, for Wayne, for Herbie [Hancock], and for you. And he wants to know if you’ll play on it.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ I played on his song ‘Full Moon.’ He liked it so much that invited me into his studio to play on other songs. And that was my connection to Miles Davis.” [There are two other Santana/Rustichelli songs on Sentient: “Vers Le Soleil” and “Full Moon.”]
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The collaborator closest to Santana’s heart, however, is Cindy Blackman Santana, his wife of the past 15 years, and the drummer in his touring band. Their song “Coherence” is the penultimate track on the album. “I am so blessed that God put Cindy in my life,” says Santana. “She’s my lover, she’s my friend, she’s my spiritual partner, and she’s on stage every night playing drums with me. We get to go into different adventures every night because we love to improvise.”
Santana is just three years shy of his 80th birthday, but he continues to tour heavily, in addition to playing regular residencies at the House of Blues in Las Vegas. He credits his longevity to clean living and spiritual health. “A lot of people OD on themselves, like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney Houston,” he says. “I made a conscious choice years ago that I wouldn’t be one of them. And so I started to meditate, which I learned from Sri Chinmoy, a guru I discovered through [jazz fusion guitarist] John McLaughlin.”
For several years, Santana says his life was “like West Point” without any drugs or alcohol, and several hours a day of meditation. “And now many people my age have either crossed over to the other side or they’re not in a position to play because their bodies are worn out,” he says. “I’m almost 80, and in pretty good shape. When I show up, I bring what Miles Davis called ‘motherfucker energy.’”
His concerts are packed with Santana hits like “Evil Ways,” “Black Magic Woman,” “Soul Sacrifice,” and “Smooth” (“We know what people want to hear,” he says), but he remains the only member of the group from the classic Woodstock lineup. The vast majority of them came back together in 2016 to record Santana IV, but the project fizzled after just a few live appearances. Can he imagine playing with singer/organist Gregg Rolie and the others again some day?
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“Nothing’s impossible,” he says. “I think people have other priorities. I think Gregg might have other priorities, and so does [Journey guitarist] Neil Schon. But I do have one brother who shows up with me a lot. That’s [percussionist] Michael Carabello. But nothing’s out of the realm of possibilities. It depends on their hearts. If they’re able to coexist and create music with me without resentment or without war against me, I welcome it.”
One thing he doesn’t ever see happening is a Santana farewell tour. “I don’t think like that,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of people who retire every year. Every tour for the last 20 years has been their last tour. When I’m done, I’m not even going to tell anybody. I’ll just do the last concert.”
