CARAVANSERAI

In the forum I once stated that Santana is not really in the right place when it is being reviewed on this website. But that doesn't have anything to do with my feelings about his music. I'm even a big fan of Santana, a childhood love of mine, following his carreer and albums at least until 1982. After that he fell back in my believe just showing occasionally that he is still a great artist (Victory is Won, Smooth). But the reason I feel Santana shouldn't be on progarchives has something to do with his commercial intentions besides of course the fact that Santana isn't really prog to me. The qualification jazz rock fusion is partly correct but then we forget about his common popsongs and albums like Marathon and Zebop. I do believe there are a few albums that come close to prog, close enough to me to be reviewed here but that only goes for this one and Borboletta and maybe the 3rd album. The rest I will not review even though I could.

What is so interesting about Caravanserai ? Hard to explain, but at least this album is very special. I already felt that way in the early eighties when I bought the vinyl. This album is different from all the other material in his carreer. It's even a mystery how he came to do something so different all over sudden. Maybe it has to do with his spiritual and religious switch he made in his life around that time but that's just a guess. I also remember I loved one song in particular of this release and that was Song of the wind. That's no surprise probably because it's the track on which he shows his outstanding talent for guitarplaying the best. Some of the other tracks (2,4,6 and 10) are more of the usual Santana though slightly different. The other tracks can be considered more as interesting and special and also mysterious. But because one really good song isn't enough to me to call it a masterpiece I'll keep it at 4 stars even though it's an essential album.