Music For A Child

I’ve been on a major Santana kick lately. It’s all I listen to-aside from the soundtrack of Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz that have been running through my head. Maybe it’s that African-Latino sound that grabs my ear every so often, resulting in non-stop Santana binges.

It’s all the old stuff: Moonflower, Live at the Fillmore-’68, Abraxas, the third album (Toussaint L’Overture: amazing!), Shango. I listen to the somewhat new one as well: Supernatural. It’s the earlier stuff that makes me want to move, though. Those rhythms are so raw; they could give you shivers all through your body. How could you not dance to something like this?

The girl digs it too: she gets down with her funky dance. I have no idea where it came from.
She looks like some Voodoo Goddess channeling her ancestors. Given her ancestry, she might just be.

Santana was a big influence throughout my childhood. It was always playing, along with Jethro Tull, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, The Guess Who and Heart among many others.
I have a very vivid memory of my father playing Shango on the record player (you know, when records were still pretty much in the mainstream). I’d dance only as a kid could: with crazy abandon, and sing. Oh yes. Belting it out only as a kid can: really loud and slightly off-key. In the center of that record was the likeness of ‘Shango’. I’d watch this Shango spinning round and round the incantations of music on the record player. Damn it was scary as a kid! Powerful, though: I could never stop looking at it. I can still see it in my head. Perhaps it has become a little distorted in my memory stores over the years. I don’t have the album and I can’t seem to find a picture of it. I bet if I look at it today, I’d say: That’s not so scary…who knows.

Too bad when the CD came out, there wasn’t any room for the Great Shango. You wouldn’t have even known he was part of the album, spinning and spinning, unless you knew of the record.

With all that said, I wonder sometimes how what kind of music I listen to (among other things) will influence my girl, what sort of memories the music will create for her.