On July 15, 2004, Carlos Santana took to the stage at the Montreux Jazz Festival to perform songs about peace and understanding dubbed Hymns For Peace. Joining the guitarist were Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ravi Coltrane and Idrissa Diop with additional guest appearances throughout the night from Angelique Kidjo, Barbara Morrison, Patti Austin, Sylver Sharp, Steve Winwood and Nile Rodgers. Hymns For Peace: Live At Montreux 2004 is a two-DVD set documenting the event, shimmering and gliding like a huge and elegant spacecraft preparing to set down on a friendly and festive landscape.
After a few minutes of introductions, Carlos Santana, the New Santana Band (aka NSB), and an honor roll of special friends explore the ether regions of African rhythms absorbed in a polyphasic ménage of jazz, world and some flavoring of Tropicalia. Slipping into “Afro Blue,” Mongo Santamaria’s Latin jazz classic popularized by John Coltrane. it’s especially poignant to hear Ravi Coltrane interpret his father’s lyrical, loopy lines while Santana and Wayne Shorter took their cues.
To somehow validate the cause, Santana and company cover songs by spiritual avatars like Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis and John Lennon. At times, the gaggle of singers and instrumentalists overwhelm some of the songs’ simple arrangements. Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind” aptly segues into Wonder’s “A Place In The Sun,” and the lazy and lofty swing of Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On” is tastefully spearheaded by the compelling vocals of Barbara Morrison, Patti Austin, Angelique Kidjo, and Sylver Logan Sharp. But it’s on the second disc that the Montreux stage starts to levitate between moments of brilliance and over saturation.
Stevie Winwood digs his heels in on “Why Can’t We Live Together,” Santana and McLaughlin become one for “Let Us Go Into The House of The Lord,” and the enitre group rip relentlessly through a patch of Davis’ ” In A Silent Way” — three major reasons to watch this disc. Unfortunately, the circus rolls into town during Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and Lennon’s “Imagine,” and the presentation comes off as callous and unnecessarily overblown. But you gotta give an “A” for effort here. Santana’s eclectic choice of artists and music, rallied together for a noble cause, more than make up for the set’s shortcomings. After all, the spiritual treasures of music work in ways only higher powers can understand.
~ Shawn Perry
