Santana - Milagro (1992)

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Milagro is the seventeenth studio album by Santana, released in 1992.

Milagro, which means “miracle” in Spanish, was dedicated to the lives of Miles Davis and Bill Graham, and was Santana’s first album on the Polydor label after twenty-two years with Columbia Records. The album reached 102 in the Billboard 200.

The band has been altered by official addition of frequent sideman Raul Rekow and Karl Perazzols, replacement of longtime percussionist Armando Peraza. But this septet is still led by Carlos Santana and keyboardist Chester Thompson, with Alex Ligertwood singing. The record has a somewhat elegiac tone, beginning with a stage introduction by the late promoter Bill Graham, who was Santana‘s mentor and unofficial manager, being dedicated to Graham and Miles Davis, who also had died since the last album, and featuring an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., solos taken from Davis and John Coltrane, and music written by Bob Marley, Coltrane, and Gil Evans. Despite the presence of all these heroic ghosts, however, Milagro is only an average Santana release, familiar-sounding but undistinguished, and it failed to arrest the band’s commercial slide,

Santana is the most successful practitioner of fusion because he understands the style not as a souped-up rock-jazz hybrid but as an embrace of musical pantheism. Elements of salsa, pop, blues, jazz, R&B, rock, world music and reggae work their way in and out of the arrangements on Milagro, due in no small part to the smarts of coproducer Chester Thompson, whose virtuoso keyboard work shares the soloing spotlight with Santana’s guitar.

Santana’s vision of fusion grew out of the same creative upheavals responsible for the social and political ferment of the Sixties and early Seventies. The difference between Santana and other guitarists, such as Alvin Lee, who first came to prominence as a result of the Woodstock documentary is that Santana never stopped considering his music an outgrowth of deeply held spiritual values.

Santana sees his music as an agent for political liberation and an expression of religious mysticism. He brings these elements into focus on Milagro, invoking the power of music to “free the people” one minute and likening Jesus Christ to Martin Luther King the next. His vision of Christ as an agent for justice stands in stark contrast to the fundamentalist cant underlying most North American Christian propaganda, extends his fascination with Eastern religions and marks a return to his own roots in liberation theology, an important philosophical strain of Latin American Catholicism.

On the musical front, changing labels has proven a tonic for Santana’s guitar playing. His attack is razor sharp, and his solos — on the title track, “Red Prophet,” “Gypsy/Grajonca” and “We Don’t Have to Wait” — rank among his best.

Milagro, which means “miracle,” is dedicated to two people who died last year and who were central to Santana’s life as an artist — Bill Graham, who gives the opening introduction, and Miles Davis, who plays a short, unaccompanied coda on the set-closing “A Dios.” It is a worthy tribute.

Track listing

1. "Introduction   Bill Graham (Milagro)"  (M. Johnson, Bob Marley, Carlos Santana) – 7:34
2. "Somewhere in Heaven"  (Alex Ligertwood, Santana) – 9:59
3. "Saja/Right On"  (Joe Roccisano/Earl DeRouen, Marvin Gaye) – 8:51
4. "Your Touch"  (Santana, Chester D. Thompson) – 6:34
5. "Life Is for Living"  (Pat Sefolosha) – 4:39
6. "Red Prophet" { Instrumental } (Benny Rietveld) – 5:35
7. "Agua que va caer"  (Carlos Valdes, Eugene "Totico" Arango) – 4:22
8. "Make Somebody Happy"  (Santana, Ligertwood) – 4:14
9. "Free All the People (South Africa)"  (Jackie Holmes) – 6:04
10. "Gypsy/Grajonca"  (Santana, Thompson) – 7:09
11. "We Don't Have to Wait"  (Santana, Armando Peraza, Thompson) – 4:34
12. "A Dios"  (Santana, John Coltrane, Gil Evans) – 1:21

Personnel

• Carlos Santana — guitar, vocals
• Chester D. Thompson — keyboards, horn/string arrangements, backing vocals
• Benny Rietveld — bass
• Walfredo Reyes, Jr. — Drum set, percussion
• Raul Rekow — timbales, percussion, vocals
• Karl Perazzo — timbales, guido, quinto, bongo, vocals
• Billy Johnson — drums (“Right On” and “Your Touch”)
• Tony Lindsay — vocals (“Life Is for Living”, “Make Somebody Happy”)
• Alex Ligertwood — vocals (“Somewhere in Heaven”)
• Larry Graham — vocals (“Right On”)
• Rebeca Mauleon — piano (“Agua que va a caer”)
• Wayne Wallace — trombone (“Agua que va caer”, “Free All the People” and “Milagro”)
• Bill Ortiz — trumpet (“Agua que va caer”, “Free All the People” and “Milagro”)
• Robert Kwock — trumpet (“Agua que va caer”, “Free All the people” and “Milagro”)
• Melecio Magdaluyo — saxophone (“Agua que va caer”, “Free All the People” and “Milagro”)
• Bad River Singers — vocal chant (“Agua que va caer”)
• John Philip Shenale – string programming
• Lygia Ferragallo – backing vocals

Notes
Released:  May 1992
Recorded at:   Studio The Plant Studios, Sausolito, California
Genre:   Latin rock
Length:  70:23

Label - Polydor Records