CARLOS SANTANA WITH SADAO WATANABE - LIVE... UNDER THE SKY '91

• carlos santana with sadao watanabe: live... under the sky '91
      (2021, 2cd, uk, equinox)

The 1991 concert that Carlos did in Japan with special guest Sadao Watanabe might not be part of Carlos' extensive discography, but an audio recording of this concert has recently hit the shops.

Previously made available on DVD bootleg, the concert has now been released on CD in the "Live... Under The Sky" series on the Equinox (bootleg) label.

Pretty amazing.

Hadn't heard it before. And only found out today that the video recording can be found on YouTube.

By 1991 the band Santana had evolved from latin organ and percussion grooves through trippy jazz-fusion and arrived at a form of high energy latin soul/rock. It’s a journey few watching them at Woodstock in 1969 would have predicted. Twenty-two years and countless albums later Carlos Santana himself was the only original member present in Tokyo. A close friend of Miles Davis and devotee of John Coltrane, he had regularly incorporated elements of jazz into his music, so it is no surprise to see Japan’s greatest living saxophonist, Sadao Watanabe, added here. For his part Watanabe is happy to play latin, funk and fusion, his solos easily matching Santana’s overdriven guitar for invention and energy. The tunes are taken from the Santana albums Freedom (1987) and Spirits Dancing In The Flesh (1990) as well as classics from their LPs Abraxas (1970) and Amigos (1976). Performed at the Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan 21st May 1991 and broadcast on NHK radio.