Carlos Santana refers to himself in the third person a few times during an interview before his concert yesterday - rock superstars tend to do that - but he did not claim to be what so many have called him: "God of Latin rock."
Nor does he purport to be the head of his own organized religion. Perish the thought. He has harsh words for such figures. Santana's a mellow guy, but his ire can be raised on issues he's passionate about. No, Santana is perhaps best thought of as a "shaman" - which was actually the title of his last album - a spiritual guide between the visible world and the invisible world that holds the secrets of peace, love and joy for every living human being on the planet.
If you've been watching CNN for any length of time lately - not a healthy thing to do for one's spirit - it behooves us to listen to Carlos Santana's hopeful words. They might not be as "out there" as they seem.
He states his goal: "When you strip me of all that I am, I think my purpose is really to reconnect as many people as possible to their own sense of light. As you know, most people squirm when you give them a compliment. They don't think they're worthy of their own grace or their own divinity. They think they're dirty, filthy people and Jesus is the only one who cleans us. That's the wrong perception to have on this planet.
"My purpose is to awaken as many people as possible to the awareness that we are just as good as Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Allah, Rama, Jehovah. We all have the same light. God made us in his image. We weren't born filthy or ignorant or sinful. That stuff is pimp talk. It's just like a pimp telling you that it's a jungle out there and you need them to get by."
He offers an example of spirituality vs. religion: "If Jesus would appear, like he said he would in the Bible, parts the sky like a zipper and - shazam! - come to Earth, the first thing I think he would do is go to the Pope and say, 'you built all of this stuff in my name?! It's worth $3 trillion? Tell you what: I want you to feed the world for the next 100 years in my name, and you can keep the other half.'
"That wouldn't go over very well, would it? So spirituality has nothing to do with religion or politics. It has to do with the betterment of life, people and the planet."
Santana says this is the essential message he's been trying to get across for nearly 40 years - from Woodstock 1969 to today - through his music. Whether he's working with Herbie Hancock or Bo Bice, it doesn't change. The latter is a guest on Santana's forthcoming album, All That I Am, along with people like Michelle Branch, Mary J. Blige, Steven Tyler, Sean Paul, Joss Stone and Los Lonely Boys. We promised the record company we'd save some of this interview for when the album comes out Nov. 1, but we can say this: the point of such a star-laden project - along the same lines of his Grammy-sweeping Supernatural album in 1999 - is not to sell lots of records in order to make a lot of money. It's to sell a lot of records in order to reach a lot of people. If Bo Bice can help, more power to the shaman.
Santana goes on, "I think the music reminds people that we are precious beyond our bank accounts. We are the best of our mother and father, if you choose to behave like it. It's all about choices. That's the most important spiritual thing you can learn: You have choices. You're not stuck. So you can apologize for being a human being or you can open your arms and say, I'm grace and I'm worthy of that grace."
On the question of whether he feels the weight of his role in popularizing "Latin rock," he says he has no trouble separating himself between musician - or as the case may be, "rock star" - and man.
"Fortunately, my brain is not wired to keep tabs on who I'm supposed to be for whom," he says. "I separate the Carlos on stage from who I am off stage. This is how musicians get screwed up, or when they OD, they don't know when to get off the stage. As soon as I put the guitar down, man, I'm Carlos. The other guy is another guy. I don't mix them together. That's what I do. This is who I am."
While Carlos the Latin guitar Go ... sorry, musician stays away from politics on stage, Carlos the man tackles the issues straight on, more or less.
"I'm not afraid of Bush and I'm not afraid of the Pope," he says. "I don't consider them to be adversaries, I consider them to be obstacles, like Nixon and LBJ."
So there is hope yet, he continues. He even offers another analogy for all the soul-sickened CNN addicts out there.
"If you see a woman giving birth and if you only see the pain in her eyes, that's CNN. When you see the joy when the baby comes out, that's the other side."
When a shaman says something like that, his followers ought to know by now exactly what he's talking about.
