The 500 - #207 - Abraxas - Santana

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #207
Album Title: Abraxas
Artist: Santana

Genre: Latin Rock, Jazz Fusion, Psychedelic Rock
Recorded: Wally Heider Studio, San Francisco; Pacific Recorders, San Mateo, California

Released: September, 1970
My age at release: 5
How familiar was I with it before this week: Very

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #334, dropping 128 spots
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Samba Pa Ti

Album cover for Santana's Abraxas.

The other day while cleaning and organizing cupboards I found a high school yearbook. It was a tome from 1985, documenting the half year I spent at H.B. Beal Secondary School, improving my grades to get into university. As I flipped through the pages I was struck by how homogeneous faces seemed. More than 90 percent of the headshots were Caucasian and the last names were almost exclusively Western European (English, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch, Portuguese and French). Ironically, Beal was considered one of the most "multicultural" schools in London, Ontario, in 1985 because it was centrally located and offered a  wide variety of technology and industrial programs, along with arts and academic options.

H.B. Beal Secondary School in downtown London, Ontario.

Currently, I work with a wonderfully diverse group of students at a local elementary school, most of whom are first or second generation Canadians. I could easily run a mock United Nations learning activity because the mix includes students with origins in Egypt, Korea, China, Vietnam, Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Finland, Lebanon, Kosovo, Pakistan, India, Albania, Turkestan and the Bahamas.

London's demographics are changing, but not as much as my classroom would lead you to think. According to the 2021 census, the most common ethnic or cultural origins in London are still English (21.9%), Scottish (17.4%), Irish (16.8%), Canadian (12.1%) and German (9.3%). In other words, 78 percent of my hometown's population still matches the pictures and names I saw in my 1985 yearbook.

An aerial view of London, Ontario looking North from the forks of the Thames River.

I've always loved learning about other cultures and, from a young age, wanted to be considered "worldly". As a teen, growing up in the pretty but terribly vanilla city of London, this was not an easy challenge. However, I found escape and knowledge through movies at the local repertory cinema  (The New Yorker), novels and magazines at the library and used book stores (City Lights) and, of course, the music I purchased in record shops.

City Lights Book Shop in London, Ontario.

When I picked up my first copy of Abraxas, the second studio album by the San Francisco Latin Rock band Santana, it was because I wanted to appear multi-culturally hip. I'd heard two of the record's biggest hits, Black Magic Woman and Oye Cómo Va, on classic rock radio. Additionally, the band's lead guitarist and founding member, Carlos Santana, was admired by many of my friends as a generational talent. Indeed, Rolling Stone Magazine's 2023 edition featuring the 250 Greatest Guitar Players of All Time lists Carlos Santana at position #11. Granted, it was a controversial choice that resulted in heavy criticism from music fans. The Mexican-born musician was ranked ahead of highly regarded guitar legends Keith Richards (The Rolling Stones), Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Prince and Brian May (Queen).

Carlos Santan performing in the 70s.

Formed in San Francisco in 1966, the Santana band was a collaboration between Carlos Santana and keyboard player Greg Rolie. Having discovered the hippie and counterculture movement, The duo of Rolie and Santana eventually expanded to seven members, allowing them to blend elements of Latin American music with the blues and psychedelic rock sounds popular in Northern California -- Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Jefferson Airplane.

Santana 1971. (l-r): Neal Schon, Gregg Rolie, Michael Shrieve,
Michael Carabello, David Brown, Carlos Santana, José "Chepito" Areas

The group's debut album, the self-titled Santana, was panned by critics, with Rolling Stone Magazine writer Langdon Winner calling it "a masterpiece of hollow technique" and "a speed freak's delight – fast, pounding, frantic music with no real content." Rolie and Santana were brutally critiqued for "playing repetitively unimaginative (music) amidst a monotony of incompetent rhythms and inconsequential lyrics."

The self-titled debut from Santana (1969).

To their credit, the band responded a year later with a strong second release, Abraxas. The title took its name from the Gnostic god, with each letter of the biblical Greek word ἀβραξάς representing the seven so-called “classical planets” (those that can be seen with the naked eye –  the moon, the sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter. These celestial spheres are also connected to the days of the week and the 12 signs of the Zodiac.

At the time, my friends and I were enamoured by all things mystical and magical and, in my role as Dungeon Master, I was quick to write the god Abraxas into the Dungeons and Dragons campaigns I presented each Sunday when we gathered to participate in the role-playing game. Back then, evangelicals lambasted the popular pastime, claiming it had overtones of the occult and devil worship. However, we never took it that seriously. It was a fun distraction and playing the game made me a better writer, while the statistics-heavy rulebook strengthened my arithmetic skills.

Abraxas, the album not the god, was well received by music fans and critics. Carlos Santana and Greg Rolie seem to have figured out how to blend the psychedelic sound they were after, punctuating it neatly with a blend of jazz and Latin salsa rhythms. The first three songs on side one – Singing Woods, Crying Beasts; Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen; and Oye Cómo Va – segue into each other to create a beautifully hypnotic mini-suite. I enjoyed re-listening to it as much for this blog as I did when I purchased the record in 1981. Interestingly, all three of those musical pieces were written and performed by other artists. It seems that Santana and Rolie realized their strength was in interpretation, rather than composition.

Black Magic Woman - originally written and recorded
by Fleetwood Mac (1968).

Abraxas did the trick for me in the ‘80s. It helped me feel worldly and multi-culturally receptive as I navigated high school, basement parties and Dungeon and Dragons games in what I saw as, boring and bland, vanilla London, Ontario. Little did I know at the time that Santana’s drummer was from my hometown. Graham Lear, who attended Prince Charles and Churchill Public School, as well as Clarke Road Secondary School, began his professional music career with the London (Ontario) Symphony Orchestra at age 13. Eventually, he joined popular Canadian musician Gino Vanelli and helped record on some of his earliest records. He also toured with REO Speedwagon and Paul Anka but, from 1977-1987, he was the drummer for Santana,  pounding out those sweet Latin grooves.

Lear performing with Santana in 1977.

Lear was inducted into the London Music Hall of Fame in 2018. He still plays with his own Graham Lear Trio. He lives in Niagara-On-The-Lake with his wife, Penny, whom he married in 2008. So, as it turns out, my yearning for cultural experience didn’t mean having to leave my vanilla world. Through music, it was right there.