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Many of his fan base would be alienated by this recording, but Santana had his own reasons, and his own personal and spiritual growth were a big part of it. This was Santana's fourth release and also the end of his old band. Greg Rollie and Neal Schoan would go off to form Journey, while drummer Mike Shreive, Jose Chepito, and Carlos Santana would stay together for one more album, and this couldn't be a better swan song. Even with all that, the music still stays true to the spirit of what his music had been all along, vibrant, vital, and with a rawness he has been refining ever since. If your listening to hear "oye como va", no you won't here anything like that on this recording, but if you've grown any since those years so long ago, Caravanserai is for mature listeners.
This is my favorite Santana album and one of my top ten island picks. Santana moves away from the Latin influence and offers a free flowing jazz stream of consciousness record.
I have Santana's first three albums and was apprehensive about buying this CD, from what I heard, this is where Santana went soft and jazzy. If your into the Santana legacy and you skipped over this, your missing out guys, I'm telling you. Page may be the King of Innovation, but Carlos is the King of Inspiration. No. You'll kick yourself for not buying it sooner. Sure it's a smite lighter than his first three releases, but with the same great guitar, check, same Latin percussion, check, same beautiful keyboards/organ, check. I started to play the first track, heard crickets chirping, and thought, sure enough, this is going to be elevator and camel walking music. Neal Schon and Greg Rolie, who both later played with Journey, contributed superbly.
It's all here."Song of the Wind" is flawless and uplifting, Carlos' celestial playing put tears in my eyes. I believe it's one of his best off any release. Both are geniuses in their own genre, but that's a whole different review.This is a remarkable CD revealing Santana's spiritual and jazz-fusion side, but nevertheless, one of their best. And who cares about bonus tracks, 5 star CD's don't need no stinking badges or bonus tracks.
This the best Santana album ever, The frist i heard it to today it is still great. If like good music and something that you will fall in love with.It's too bad not all his albums are like this one. People call it jazz i call good. You heaar this.
If so, it's rather ironic that his newfound mysticism led Carlos to craft what anyone might have expected of him at the time: a percussion-driven package which slicked up the trademark Santana sound while dispensing with its more radio-friendly elements and any sort of clear song cycle. This is basically an instrumental suite in the jazz-lite vein so popular at the time, with more and tastier percussion and (thanks to Carlos) worse vocals than the average. Released in 1972, CARAVANSERAI was Santana's fourth album and first overt stab at the then-ascendant jazz fusion market. Of the numerous unfamiliar musicians present, some would remain in the band for years while others would never play with Santana again. If you consider "Black Magic Woman" to be the apex of this band's career, it's surprising that you're even reading this, but you can rest assured you'll have little interest in the collection in question. In the era of Return to Forever, Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, CARAVANSERAI was hardly revolutionary, even if its provenance might have raised a few eyebrows. To some extent this is reflected in the music, which is admirably played and suitably spacey but lacks the strong stamp of collective personality so evident on CARAVANSERAI's three predecessors - not to mention anything which might qualify as a likely single.
If the jammier selections on the first few Santana LPs are your thing, CARAVANSERAI makes sense as a follow-up purchase. It was also, according to the liner notes in this attractively packaged reissue, an attempt to convey in musical terms the spiritual awakening which leader/guitarist Carlos Santana had undergone through his involvement with guru Sri Chinmoy. A solid piece of work, certainly, but one understandably left out of most compilations and little known among the uninitiate. While all of the members of the classic Santana lineup appear on this album, they are never all together and only Carlos and drummer Mike Shrieve are on hand throughout. Thus the start of the revolving-door personnel changes which remain one of Carlos' trademarks to this day. If you're into the early efforts of Chick Corea and John McLaughlin, it could almost qualify as a must. To put it another way, for headphone people only.
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