Carlos Santana discusses his new EP 'In Search of Mona Lisa,' Woodstock's 50th anniversary and today's new hippies.
Four months later, he was at a gig that his wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, was playing in Baltimore, and Mona Lisa reached out to him again. “That night, I had this dream, and I woke up and The Mona Lisa was speaking to me,” he says, “and I heard the lyrics in Spanish, ‘Mujer, eres mi diosa.'” He wrote “Do You Remember Me?” in a musical style called a guajira. That song, a slow, senusous, nearly 10-minute number with a five-minute guitar solo intro, became the lead track on Santana’s new EP, In Search of Mona Lisa, which comes out January 25th.
In Search of Mona Lisa contains a triptych of tunes about Santana’s connection to Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. It was his friend, sometime Mahavishnu Orchestra drummer Narada Michael Walden, who suggested Carlos write a guajira. “Guajira is the most effective way to, excuse the expression, penetrate a woman’s heart and then they remember the whole glory of being a female and start dancing a certain way,” he says. “It’s the most tried, true and tested frequency that makes women open up like a flower.” They played it for producer Rick Rubin, with whom Santana has recorded a new full-length, “and he was so moved.” Rubin suggested they do a full album of ballads.
Beyond the recording studio, Santana is hoping to conjure that same spirit onstage. He’ll be on tour this summer for a run of dates across the U.S. that he’s calling his Supernatural Now tour; he’ll be celebrating both the 20th anniversary of his blockbuster Supernatural LP, as well as the 50th anniversary of his breakthrough concert at Woodstock. He says that people should expect “more energy” from his group than other bands, including his own bands in the past.
Santana says he sees a lot of hope in younger generations, a spirit he hasn’t seen for a few years. He’s found it heartening to see students march in protest of gun violence in schools and people who have protested the war in the Middle East. “Those are the new hippies,” he says. “Somewhere between Woodstock and this generation, a lot of people became apathetic. They look the other way or they’re just looking at their cell phones and they don’t care what’s happening.