To be Played at my Funeral
Do you have a set list for your farewell?
I am a big Carlos Santana fan. I don’t remember how many concerts I have been to. I’m not even sure how many of his albums I own, because these days I listen to them on Spotify.
He is one of those artists that you only have to hear a few notes and you know who is playing, even if you don’t know the track. There is a unique tone and Latin romanticism in his music that comes from the heart and talks to the heart.
Santana has been part of the fabric of my life and it would be fitting for Samba Pa Ti, to be played at my funeral. Not that I am planning on dying any decade soon, but when that day happens, this will be one of the tracks.
In a 2008 interview with Mojo Magazine, he said that the song was inspired by a jazz saxophonist playing in the street outside his apartment. He said, "I opened the window I saw this man in the street, he was drunk and he had a saxophone and a bottle of booze in his back pocket. And I kept looking at him because he kept struggling with himself. He couldn't make up his mind which one to put in his mouth first, the saxophone or the bottle and I immediately heard a song"..."I wrote the whole thing right there"—Carlos Santana.
I first saw Santana in the Woodstock movie, in a theatre in Amsterdam. My grandmother took me as a birthday present when I turned 13. I am still amazed that she did that and that she enjoyed it, even though her favorite composer was Bertold Brecht! I loved the percussion and the energy, but it was Abraxus that made me a lifetime fan.
Samba Pa Ti was the 6th track on the Abraxus album which also featured Black Magic Woman, which came out in 1970 while I was on a cruise ship returning home from Holland under protest, as I wanted to stay in the Netherlands instead of coming back to my dysfunctional family in New Zealand.
Samba Pa Ti was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000 for its "qualitative or historical significance". It is one of only a few instrumental songs to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
My love of Santana and this track will no doubt have contributed to the tinnitus ringing in my right ear as I put this blog together.
When I was in my early twenties, I had a 200-watt PA system with massive JBL bass bins and Altec horns which spent most of its time connected to my turntable. I would jam along with Santana at a volume that one person told me they could hear almost a kilometer away. This was one of those tracks.
I remember in one of my flats, my brother, 6 years my junior, who was still living at home, would come to visit, with a mate or two and bring a few bevies (bears) and listen to me jamming along with this track. He would have been 16 at the time and coming to visit me was like a taste of freedom, given he still lived at home.
While it was one of Santana’s signature tracks, it wasn’t one that people wanted to hear when I played covers in bars. Black Magic Woman was a popular request that people would dance and play air guitar to, but Samba Pa Ti was probably more the type of track for a musician to embrace, rather than a night on the town. That pretty much syncs with his description of what inspired it. A lone musician on the street pouring his heart and soul to anyone and no one on his sax.
Over the years I have seen him perform it many times. The Abraxus version, or a 10-minute version going off on tangents with the other band members taking turns to improvise. I’m not sure I have been to one of his gigs and he hasn’t played it. According to Setlist.FM it has been on 75% of his setlists.
It makes my heart sing, and if the house is empty, and you walk past, you might just hear me on my Les Paul, cranking it up.
So when I die, if you come to bid me farewell, this track will be number one on my final setlist.
It is of course on my Spotify Top #500 Song list that is the background to my life and this Substack.