Dance Sister Dance. Santana. 1976. Columbia.

 Like the venerated John Coltrane before him, Carlos Santana charted his enthrallment with Eastern religious traditions by recording music that sometimes played like galvanized cognitive workouts. Unlike Coltrane, Santana often fashioned records for a pop audience, a practice he shared with that other Western devotee of physical transcendence, George Harrison. Because Santana’s musical style was grounded in Latino influenced Afro-Caribbean rhythms, propelling songs out of the mire of religious lyrical dogma, the band’s  marriage of spirituality and pop sometimes succeeded where often others’ didn’t. In 1976 the band released Amigos, a seven track LP that opened with the two part, 8:15 samba, Dance Sister Dance. Sung by new vocalist Greg Walker, the record’s first part is an R&B influenced rhythmic treatise that reinvigorates the age old pop formula, sensuality plus kinesics equals beauty. A rhythm section made up of bassist David Brown, drummer Leon Ndugu Chancler, and percussionist Armando Peraza forms the basis for the song’s dance tempo momentum, punctuated by lead guitar riffs that corral the background vocalists before segueing into the song’s second part, helmed largely by keyboardist Tom Coster, Santana’s lead guitar, and the aforementioned rhythm section. This sonic foray into the representation of a prospective flight into transcendence is peak ensemble artistry, and an example of Santana’s primary strength, leading a band of multi-instrumentalists with instincts for combining nuanced elements of psychedelia, Latin pop, and jazz fusion and jazz. Transforming into popular music the processes by which one works towards mental acuity is likely an ambition most recording and live artists at one time or another is possessed with, and on Dance Sister Dance, Santana’s 1976 iteration conjure an equilibrium so adroitly poised that you can almost hear the veil of bliss being lifted. Santana never again sounded so exciting.

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