Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Success: a blessing or a curse?
... I'm happy that Carlos is seeing newfound success, but success comes at a price. He's gone from being a respected musician, guitarist and bandleader to being an ultra-commercial popstar. Listening to Supernatural, I can't help but feel that something has been lost in the process. You can't help but sense that the heart and soul of Santana's music is gone and has been replaced with stars, slick production and pop hooks. Santana has always been about merging musical genres, but there was a time when he did it for the purposes of making great music, not for getting hit singles and selling albums. Now, three years after Supernatural, we have Shaman. Carlos basically repeating the same formula, hoping for the same success. I bought Supernatural and have enjoyed some of the songs, but I regret to say that I will not be buying Shaman. He has just strayed too far from his latin-rock-blues-soul-jazz sensibilities and is now just pandering to a mainstream pop audience. It's very sad, especially since the Santana band achieved so much from 1969 to 1972. For anyone who wants to hear the REAL Santana, and not the mainstream pop version, check out Santana (1969), Abraxas (1970), Santana III (1971) and Caravanserai (1972). To get a taste of what the original group was like live check out Live at the Fillmore '68. Back in those days, Santana had success. The first three albums mentioned above were huge sellers. They had hit singles, "Evil Ways", "Black Magic Woman", "Oye Como Va", "Everybody's Everything". And he didn't need a bunch of guest stars, MTV airplay and pop songs to do it. This says a lot about the state of the music business nowadays. You can have Supernatural and Shaman, but I'm going to keep listening to the REAL Santana band: Carlos Santana, Gregg Rollie, Mike Shrieve, Dave Brown, Jose Chepito Areas and Mike Carabello. Hopefully, for his next album, Carlos will just make a Santana album. Just great music. However, I doubt it, as the allure of mainstream success is just too seductive.
Rating:  - Supernatural 2! Includes some gorgeous songs
Shaman follows the same winning formula as its incredibly successful predecessor Supernatural (which won 9 Grammies!). The sound and feel of is very reminiscent of Supernatural -- if you liked that there is a good chance that you will like this. As with Supernatural, the different music styles covered can be a little jarring sometimes (rap & hip hop rarely sound good to me -- but this at least makes them somewhat accessible). There is probably no single song quite as strong as the sublime 'Smooth' but there are several stand-out tracks that more that make up for that, such as the single 'the Game of Love' featuring Michelle Branch, 'Victory is Won' (which sounded wonderful but very familiar to me -- perhaps this is an older Santana track?), 'America' featuring POD (oh my word -- what great soaring lead guitar, flash back to the 70's and what might have been) and 'Novus' featuring Placido Domingo (I found this a bit hard to swallow first time through with the congas playing but now it is a firm favorite).One of the US guitar magazines made a big deal about Santana's adoption of the extremely rare and expensive Dumble boutique guitar amplifier for all of the tracks on this album except one-- rather than the Mesa Boogie Mk1 he has used for the past 30 years. It did sound wonderful but, to be honest, to me it just sounded like the same wonderful soaring/wailing/crying/smiling Santana guitar sounds we all know and love! A worthy album. Consider buying Abraxas (or The Best of Santana Vol 1 -- which overlaps Abraxas heavily) and Supernatural first/as well
Rating:  - It is Santana, really.
Good, not great, not the usual Santana that I grew up with. But, it is Santana. I like the change of music, the other artists that join in the fun.
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