Noise

Carlos Santana on helping, healing and the song inside us all

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Musician Carlos Santana responds to a question during an interview at his office in Las Vegas Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016.
Photo: Steve Marcus

With six Las Vegas House of Blues shows scheduled in the next two weeks, Carlos Santana is still rocking in full force.

A six-year Las Vegas resident, Santana, 69, will also launch the Santana Telehealth Project, serving malnourished children in his hometown of Autlán de Navarro, Mexico, with a benefits concert on September 24. A regular contributor to four major charities in California and Mexico, Santana has donated millions of dollars to hospitals and schools for local charities over his career.

An Interview With Carlos Santana

He sat down with the Weekly to discuss his charity work, his return to the House of Blues and motivation after more than 40 years as a world-renowned guitarist.

Tell me about your largest charity, the Milagro Foundation. What really gives me the most supreme satisfaction is knowing that I can be of service and knowing that I can make a difference in people’s lives. Since I moved here to Las Vegas, I’ve been so impressed, inspired, encouraged and uplifted by how many organizations of people have passion for compassion. Of how many people have velocity and traction for being of service to other people.

The only thing I knew before moving here was Andre Agassi and Steffi [Graf], what they’re doing with their school. And Three Square [Food Bank]. But I soon discovered seven to 11 other organizations, and it just made me realize that besides the entertainment part, there are a frequency of St. Anthonys here—of people who only wake up to heal, to tend, to uplift, to encourage and give more than tangible hope.

With the Milagro Foundation, we have a clinic in Autlán where I was born, everywhere I’ve been. We have a school in Los Angeles, and we tend to the needs to the many children around the world. Healing clefts, in South America or India, or even helping people in San Francisco.

People who believe in our foundation send requests in, and we see which ones are the most pressing. We always choose the highest priority of seven people or things at a time to take care of, because I like the number seven. Otherwise, if you’re spread too thin, it’s like putting rain in the desert; you don’t see the fruit of your labors.

We’re practical at this point, and we’re grateful we have the means and the resources to help children around the world. Education, healing, anything and everything we can do to help young minds believe that their future is assured.

But we do want to start more and more places that are self-sustaining, because people that you hire, they have same frequency and passion that you have to make schools, hospitals and enterprises better, just like you set out to do. I’d like to be able to have enterprise in Tijuana, where I’ve had more time.

What keeps you going at full steam after all of these years? What could be better than giving people the strength to believe that all you have to do is have fun? What we bring with the music and all that we know is that you can be successful in your own field of whatever is your calling and your motivation. That you’re most successful when you come up with something brilliant that other people benefit from in multitudes.

I don’t enjoy feeling like a hamster in a cage, going around and doing the same thing. That sounds boring to me. Well, it doesn’t have to be like that. I found out I had the freedom to reinvent myself everyday. That’s the thing, even though you’re the same person, you can sculpture and reinvent yourself and wake up with zest. So I’m really happy to be alive, because now more than ever it’s clear to me that Santana is here in Las Vegas to make a difference in a lot of people’s lives, in many, many forms. That’s really encouraging to me, I can look at it and say, ‘Wow, this is the best part of my life,’ because I get to see it in a tangible way every day now.

Is this a new vision that you’ve adopted in recent years, or have you always thought like that? It’s like being a dolphin all of your life, but you didn’t know you were a dolphin until you wake up and say, “Damn I’m a dolphin,” and can dive in and out, and have velocity under water.

I was doing these things, but I didn’t know with clarity just how much velocity I had with my manifestation as a human being. And it is really encouraging to see that now, you know?

What role has your musical success had in developing that mind-set? I don’t look up to anyone anymore, but I look to others. People like John Lennon and Bob Marley are immortal. They’re musicians, but they’re at a whole other level. Like the Mona Lisa. Immortality. They didn’t have to pay or do something unethical to gain immortality. John Lennon is immortal, Bob Marley is immortal.

The way you become immortal is like Mother Teresa now, just by living each day with enthusiasm to be of service to humanity. When I wake up every morning and I think about what gift can I give someone, like the gift of Santana IV. When you hear the CD from beginning to the end, you realize, wow, this is like a house, and every room is a place of dwelling where I can feel my light more.

So what I’m talking about is not how many tickets we sell and this or that, but how many people can we wake up without intruding or imposing? How many people can we wake up to their own light?

You might have diamonds and gold bars in the hamster cage, but when you’re in a place where you put a hole in the sky, you keep going. That’s what Santana is to me now. I have finally awakened to the fullness of what my mom prayed for: a person who can make a difference. This whole world is your house, and you can be the person in charge of your own life, your own destiny.

Your three children are all musicians, too. What impact do you think having parents involved in music has on kids raised in that atmosphere? I cut a balance from the things I learned from my father, Jose [also a musician]. What he knew and taught me, I didn’t see it in the big picture back then. But he taught me the basic thing—if you can give yourself chills playing music, people listening will get chills.

With all due respect, a melody is more important than any language. A melody goes straight to the heart, and the molecules understand that best. It goes to a place where you don’t need a translator to tell you what has happened. A melody is played, and your whole body feels it. It’s a universal hug, that’s what my father taught me.

So what I try to teach my children is take your time, be true and try to sculpture your own fingerprints, your own uniqueness and individuality. I’m like my dad, but I’m not like my dad. I love him, but I don’t play music that he played. I learned from it, but that’s not what I wanted to do since I was a child. I found it to be very constricting.

I’m sure my children may find my music constricting too. But what I do to invite them is to articulate the universal language of light. Genuine, honest, sincere, truthful, real and authentic.

When you hit one note with all of those things, you’re in. People will stop doing what they’re doing and have to resume it later. Music is supposed to stop you from whatever you think is most important, because music reminds you of your own song inside that is played. Everyone has a forgotten buried song there.

Santana September 16-18, 21, 23-25, 7 p.m., $90-$350. House of Blues, 702-632-7600.

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