Borboletta cover

Borboletta

Released

Beginning with 1972’s Caravanserai and followed by Welcome and Love Devotion Surrender, both featuring guest guitar from John McLaughlin, the triple live album Lotus and the Alice Coltrane collaboration Illuminations, Carlos Santana went on a spiritual jazz-rock journey for several years, derailing his career commercially while making the most beautiful and ambitious music of his career. Borboletta, released in 1974, marks the end of this phase; it features plenty of spacy, almost ambient jams and guest vocals from Flora Purim (plus percussion from her husband, Airto Moreira). Jazz-funk bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, who’d played with Miles Davis in 1971 before joining Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, also appear. There are some hard-rocking and funky moments (“Give And Take”), but a lot of this album is closer in spirit to Weather Report or In A Silent Way than Abraxas.

Phil Freeman

Suggestions
The Epic cover

The Epic

Kamasi Washington
Man-Child cover

Man-Child

Herbie Hancock
Off the End cover

Off the End

Brandon Ross
Bag It cover

Bag It

The Thing
The Afterlife cover

The Afterlife

The Comet Is Coming
Wisdom of Elders cover

Wisdom of Elders

Shabaka & the Ancestors
Codona 3 cover

Codona 3

Collin Walcott, Codona, Naná Vasconcelos, Don Cherry
The Sea II cover

The Sea II

David Darling, Jon Christensen, Terje Rypdal, Ketil Bjørnstad
Hamada cover

Hamada

Nils Petter Molvær