Santana, soul, and the art of the tribute

A nostalgic journey through the front rows of live music, celebrating the timeless spirit of rock.

Just a little after we finished handling the media relations for the India tours of Sting and Mark Knopfler back in 2005, I told the event and tour organiser who was our client that if he ever brought Santana down to India, I would handle the project for free. He gave a half-nod, not a man swayed by passionate declamations.

It took until 2012 for Santana to come here, and in the interim we had been focusing on growing our publishing vertical. Although we hadn’t worked with him on any concert promotions since, I got a text from the former client: “Come to the press conference.” That was a delightful bonus, and it was very moving to hear Santana and Cindy Blackman, the wizard drummer he’s married to, talk about their spiritual and musical bonds.

The concert was at a new venue on the city’s outskirts in Thanisandra, the first time it had been used for a show; until then, all concerts had been held in the heart of the city, at good old Palace Grounds. I persuaded the friends who had offered to pick me up to come several hours early, and though they grumbled, they came fortified for the journey with an icebox filled with restorative drinks. I added the handful of miniatures I’d pocketed at the press conference, along with the passes for the show.

We were so early that the gates weren’t open yet, but we found several others who had also come early. The parking lot became a happy camping ground, with people opening up their car boots and sharing what they had with others. Needless to say, we were in great spirits by the time the concert began. Somewhere along the way, another friend and I found each other and lost track of the people we had come with. We were already under Santana’s spell, and by the time Black Magic Woman began, we had elbowed our way to the front of the crowd. We sang and screamed Oye Cómo Va and Maria Maria, we cried and laughed, and all the young people who usually occupy the mosh pit gave us a wide berth.

Rather unexpectedly, I had the opportunity to relive this memorable concert in Bengaluru recently. This time it was a tribute concert, ‘One Night at bFlat,’ a tribute to Santana held at the Humming Tree, and what made it more appealing was that the line-up featured Bruce Lee Mani (twice named ‘Guitarist of the Year’ by Rolling Stone) and Tony Das. When these two play together as part of Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ) the rock band founded by Bruce, the music is different. But there’s no doubting that any of their shows would be great as they are among the brightest stars in the musical fraternity. To watch them perform Santana would be jam on buttered toast or rather, tabasco in the Bloody Mary, especially since I’d followed their careers from the very start.

It had been over a dozen years between the original concert and the tribute, and I wasn’t sure about standing for the whole duration. But we had missed the opportunity to buy seats with tables and gamely decided to go anyway. It was a rainy Saturday, and with added weekend traffic, we decided to go early. We arrived way before time again, but were happy to settle in with all the delicious food and drink we could manage before going up for the show.

And what an evening it turned out to be, with a line-up that included, apart from Bruce and Tony, Ranjith Samuel, Debjeet Basu, Preran Gulvady, Osi Gomango, Imraan Jamal, Joshua Pereira, Alan Thomas, Aakarsh Paul, Venky Nayak and Arati Rao Shetty (no mean singer herself, she was also the musical curator for the event). We enjoyed watching new talent bloom, and felt the air turn electric when first Tony and then Bruce strode on to the stage as fans chanted their names. With their own riffs on the music, they demonstrated what a tribute truly should be — not merely copying every single note and lick, but overlaying it with their own personality.

Watching mastery honed over years of practice, feeling the energy of the crowd and pulsing to all that Latin American music was black magic, twice over. As the old jungle saying goes — you can add years to a woman but not keep her away from the front row.

*Sandhya Mendonca, author, biographer, podcaster, and publisher at Raintree Media, offers a distinct female gaze of the world in this column.