Santana | Sentient

Jason Landry, contributor 

 

The March 2025 release of Sentient by Carlos Santana is filled with collaborations and rejuvenated tracks showcasing Santana’s signature guitar lines and Latin-infused stylings.

 

This retrospective album kicks off with Let The Guitar Play, a collaboration with Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. It’s cool an all, but I would have preferred it as a straight instrumental—just my opinion. Things pick up on the tracks Whatever Happens, featuring the late Michael Jackson and quite possibly my favorite track on the album, Please Don’t Take Your Love, featuring the great, Smokey Robinson. His guitar playing on this song is bluesy and reminded me of how B.B. King could create guitar phrases that would accentuate any singer’s vocal lines.

 

Side two of the vinyl brings us a beautiful collaboration with jazz great, Miles Davis titled Get On—his muffled horn harmonizing with Santana like only he could. The thunderous drums of Cindy Blackmon Santana take center stage on the track, Coherence, from which he states—this is a preview of what Cindy’s next album will sound like.

 

He closes out the album with a powerful guitar instrumental, Blues For Salvador to which I found to be more grittier than the version on the 1987 album of the same title. Also, for those who are wondering, the tracks on the iTunes version vary slightly from the vinyl album version.

 

As Santana says about his music, “From Stravinsky to James Brown, it’s all the same song, meaning it’s all connected to the umbilical cord of humanity and planet Earth.”

 

Santana plays from his soul and his emotions and feelings are definitely projected from his fingertips to his guitar strings. Not only does Sentient showcase his talent, but his ability to go from Latin to jazz to rock in a moments notice.