CARAVANSERAI

I, for one, sort of wanted to see a wider range of reviews on this album. This will be the 10th five star rating in a row given to Santana's Caravanserai and will, almost undoubtedly, bump it into the top 100; probably a progarchives first! And even though I am skeptical of Santana as a whole, have been for some time, this album speaks to me unlike any album I've heard in a long, long time. Knowing of Carlos Santana and his works ever since I was a kid (early 1980's) has given me a lot of wong impressions about him, because by this time so much of his catalogue had been picked apart and pop-culturalized as to make it more undesirable to me. Of his earlier stuff that I was aware of was basically limited to his solo work which was too latin driven for me to particularly empathize, and the only Santana (band) label that I really knew of was the 1999 (?) release of Supernatural which, although great for his career, wasn't anything spectalular. And so this brings me to Caravanserai. From a genre often looked upon as being rather dry this 1972 Jazz/Rock Fusion release had to of been recieved as overwhelmingly fresh. Though still along side of the GREAT John Mclaughlin and his Orchestra Caravanserai convinced a wider audience that Jazz was anything but dead. Not only that but latin music as a whole could produce a sound that was not really that sterotypical, something that has always made me adversed to the genre. Some might argue (obviously not on this site, haha) that Caravanserai starts out too slow and climaxes maybe a bit too late; perhaps those of you who think that should listen again. This album is a journey, and every journey worth taking has some developing to do before the action occurs. If track one blew up in the listeners ears on the strike of the first chord then what else would you really have to look forward to? Carlos Santana is, as I have discovered, excellent at provoking the listener to go in for the long-haul of the album. Pushing them to wonder what more this guitarist has to offer, and this album provides food for your curiosity quite nicely. Obviously there are tracks, All The Love of The Universe and Stone Flower to name a few, that excel in terms of composition but I wouldn't want to take them out of the context of the rest of the album. The only track that I feel is completely arbitrary is Future Primitive because it seems like Santana just wanted to have a crazy conga/bongo solo in the middle of the album but this isn't to say that Future Primitive is not still one of my favorite tracks on the album because, lets face it: percussion jams are awesome. Also, to address the confusion of whether or not Santana is prog... please, start listening here and then try to write a scathing review of something quite possibly prefect; I couldn't. All and all, slow to start or blowing up with exceptional musicianship, this album is nothing short of five stars. The Jazz/Rock Fusion community, I guess, might be able to find something wrong with this masterpiece but I can't. Enjoy!