Customer Reviews

Festival

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Every time Carlos Santana comes out with an album that is not what most people consider mainstream or typical of what he has done in the past, he gets critized badly(never mind that it might be good). Some of his best tunes don't get air time (Treat, Samba Pa Ti, Touissant L'Overture, Song of the Wind, Europa, Baila mi Hermana, etc.) This album is one of those, along with Borboletta, Amigos, Inner Secrets, Marathon, etc. Carlos Santana comes from a very rich musical background that unless you grew up in it, would be hard to understand. In Latin America you get to listen to Salsa, merengues, samba, cumbia and countless other latin rhythms plus the Afro and European influences and also Jazz and rock. For example take the song Maria Caracoles in this album, this was a very popular song in Cuba during the sixties made popular by Peyo El Afrocan, it was a rhythm called El Mozambique. Although Carlos( and his brother Jorge) has a tone on the guitar that is unmistakable. The phrasing and feel is very common in Latin music specially in romantic songs or Trio music. Listen to Los Panchos, trio Matamoros, Los Tres Aces and my favorite Los Tres Caballeros and you will know what I mean. If you are a Latin person over forty you will relate to a lot of Carlos phrasing even if it is a new tune. Flor D'Luna from Moonflower is typical of this. This Festival album from the seventies is very enjoyable. If you keep an open mind you will like it too.

This is a richly varied album containing fine quality cuts in a number of genres including as hot a Latin boogie as anything from Lou Bega, Ricky Martin and others in "Maria Caracoles", "Let the Music Set You Free" and a very warm, if not chili-hot "Let The Children Play". There are also atmospheric instrumentals such as "Revelations" and a beautiful soul ballad "The River". On 'Festival' Carlos showed he could mix it brilliantly in 1976 just as he did 23 years later on Supernatural. A very enjoyable listen.

Festival displays the always-fine guitar of Carlos Santana and the keyboards of Tom Coster, and has some high points. There are two standout pretty tracks: the acoustic, Brazilian (and sort of flamenco) "Verao Vermelho" and the haunting "Revelations," with its fine guitar work speeding up, as in "Europa." The lively "Carnaval" and "Jugando" contain excellent performances by Chepito Areas and the rest of the percussion section. However, these songs and others, verseline and music, lack the edge of Santana's earlier days, instead showcasing plain-sounding Latin rhythms, and the other softer songs are of lesser quality. In addition, Carlos' latter-day inclination to delve into mediocre funk pops up on a number of tracks, not of interest to me, and many. Santana would display a brief return to form on the studio tracks of the immediately subsequent Moonflower, but Festival is another example of the phasing out of the excellent sound of the group's first six years.

As with AMIGOS, the preceding album to FESTIVAL, if you are interested in having only the best of these two works and do not care if you possibly by-pass some other nice tracks, I would highly recommend going straight to the next album, MOONFLOWER which contains some live material of the best of both albums, and the live performances are spot-on perfect renditions which are actually even better sounding!

FESTIVAL is however not a poor album at all, and though it charted much lower than AMIGOS, (Festival peaked at #27 on the charts, Amigos peaked at #10), in some ways it is a much better album. No it does not have anything coming close to the caliber of Dance Sister Dance, and Europa, but it does provide a collage of some of the best instrumental work and songwriting that Carlos, Tom, and the band did in the years following the breakthrough classic rock trio and the fusion-jazz period trio, of albums. FESTIVAL opens up with a three track medley, over 8 minutes, of happy "festival" music drawing on the Latin Carnavale inspirations. Carnaval-Let The Children Play-Jugando form a perfect display of the Santana sound we all love. Carnaval and Let The Children Play are sung by collective members of the band in English and Spanish, and Jugando ends the medley with an awesome guitar-synthesizer instrumental reminiscent of the jazz band Weather Report. Leon Patillo, lead vocalist on BORBOLETTA, is back for this album and sings lead vocals on Give Me Love, a Brazilian/R&B, girl-from-ipanema-ish pretty track. This is followed by a very unique Santana song, one like no other in the vast catalogue. Verão Vermelho is Portuguese for "Red Summer", and pays homage to Brazilian singer Elise Regina who won a Festival Song contest and rose to prominence in South American music, becoming who many believed to be the best singer ever in South America. Verão Vermelho features a first-ever flamenco guitar solo by Carlos at the beginning and conclusion of the song (yes he first played Spanish nylon strings on AMIGOS, but not in flamenco style) and the song is carried along with a marching drum and maracas and the coda guitar is accompanied by a keyboard flourish from Tom. This song is one of the highlights of the album.
The other highlight of the album is Revelations by Tom and Carlos. Another instrumental, Revelations is almost a jazz bolero, beginning with piano solo, more and more instruments are added on: electric guitar, orchestral strings, various drums, the song tempo slowly builds along with volume and multiple layers of guitar overdubs are added including wah-wah to the conclusion. The song is one of Santana's best.
Let The Music Set You Free, Reach Up, and The River, are all Carlos and Leon Patillo collaborations with solid rhythm and blues vocals, good songs all. Leon's Try A Little Harder is okay but the real clunker is the album closer, María Caracôles, a traditional African entry that attempts to do the same as El Nicoya which closes ABRAXAS and pretty much results in the same indifference.

For the Santana enthusiast, FESTIVAL is a must, but for casual fans, save your money and buy MOONFLOWER.

First off, this album should have been merged with Amigos, since Festival was released the same year as the masterpiece Moonflower. If the mediocre tracks on both albums were taken out, and the superb tracks were left in, what you would get is a extremely good album.
The first four songs on the album are great, but things kind of go down hill on "Verao Vermelho." I don't see what people like in this song. "Revelations" is a breathtaking piece of music. Reach Up and The River are mediocre, but the album ends on the plus side with the "feel good" track Try A Little Harder" and the dance classic "Maria Caracoles."
Chepito Areas returns on his last studio performance with Santana. He would come out in the live tracks on Moonflower.
The drummer does an "alright, so-so" job. Ndugu Chancler did a better job on Amigos, and he should have stayed for Festival as well. But no one can even come close to Michael Shrieve. If he would have stayed to play on festival with Chepito Areas, this album would have been much better.
Overall, minus some cons, this album is recommended.

The first album I bought on my own was Santana. The first album from Carlos. There came a time when I might have agreed with the popular view that Santana lost it. But with time and age I find that his work must be considered in increments roughly defined by the albums. This is an artist who has looked deep inside himself, his culture, and the world around him. I have seen him live. No matter what his latest recording may contain, it's always a great show.

With this album there are works that mark the age it was recorded. Then there are pieces that transcend - Revelations is one such piece. I can't imagine not being gripped by this music and carried far away. The whole album shows Carlos in one period perhaps not popular to those who could not let go of his early style. But people grow. If Santana had kept making music in the first form, would not we have grown tired of that?

Listen and Love

I'd just like to say that 20+ years ago, this was my very first introduction to Santana and Latin music in general - a mere child, someone inadvertently left their 331/3rpm Festival Album at my house - which I (hands up here) admittedly snuck into my bedroom to play on my mini radio/record player and fell totally in love with Carlos Santana (PS I still have the LP!). From that day to this have been and will always be an avid fan, so don't listen to any reviews about his old music being naff or not a patch on today's current mainstream stuff, this is where it all began remember, buy it, listen to it, savour it and above all ENJOY it! If you're not sure about Santana, this is an ideal introduction.

As it turned out the all around success of Amigos proved to be yet another stepping stone for Carlos Santana. Even there you could see something was happening. Apparently more than aware that his jazz ventures during the early to mid 70's distanced him from some of his original latino Santana were apparently seeking to remedy that to a degree with his particular album. While keeping Tom Coster ondoard Ndugu is replaced by Gaylord Birch and Alex Ligertwood is replaced in the vocal department by singer/songwriter Leon Patillo. Overall there's a sense on this album of in fact taking something of a late 70's approach to their earlier jam style of music. Even when some of the older styles the previous album embraced are bought to the surface,pop considerations are not generally put on a very high priority. But as always Carlos goes for the musical and audience communication end of the spectrum. And on that end he almost always wins out.

The opening of "Carnaval","Let The Children Play" and "Jugando" set the tone-shorter songs with fiery percussion and the usual communicative level of soloing from Santana and everyone else. "Give Me Love",written by bassist Pablo Tellez and sung by Leon Patillo is the one major pop oriented song here,a funk/pop ballad in the EWF/Charles Stepney style that acts sort of as a cooling of point from the heaviness that begins the album. On "Let The Music Set You Free" Carlos let's his inner Sly Stone loose with a rocking,organ based funk jam with a message that's vital and stays thoroughly on the one. "Reach Up" does much the same thing,actually pointing a bit towards the funk sound of the previous album. "The River" is another poppier ballad,this time with more of a stripped down style 70's windy city soul flavor. "Try A Little Harder" brings it all together for a strong latino/funk hybrid and is one of the albums strongest songs. That latin flavor continues on "Verao Vermelho" and "Maria Caracoles" wheres "Revelations" continues in the sparse spiritial theme.

Operating from a much wider musical pallet and bring with a different range of ideas than what came immediately beforehand this album all too often gets thrown into a rubbish pile of "Santana albums no one wants to hear". Sure some of it might have to do with his embrace of funk as an art form when it's generally a genre that gets laughed at by all too many in the elitist rock and jazz circles. But because of the fact Santana was based out of San Francisco says a lot about this. Carlos himself definitely had the advantage in being able to discover the "message in the middle of the bottom" as to where the rock,jazz and latin music that inspired him led him into creating. Also his spiritual journey at the time was leading him further down the jazz-funk road and more towards a creative path than a commercial one. All the same Columbia gave him every chance they could and while not always commercially satisfying albums such as this give one important insights into Santana's inspirations,on many levels small and large.

'Festival' is ifcourse no Santana I,II,III, but it's a fine album on its own.
The 70's sound comes thru on a few tracks, and we get a feel that Carlos is moving away from Latin rock into jazz/fusion. Not a must have for the casual listener, who should get the best of collections. For $4.99 from J&R it's a good value, and as a Santana fan, am glad to add it to my collection.

Not for those who prefer Santana's headier jazz/rock thru their headphones, but perfect for those who'd like to hear what Carneval would sound like if Carlos wrote the soundtrack. This is Carlos getting in touch with his Latin roots, hombre. Excellent party music. Get up and shake your body boogie music.