Sound Chaser

Drummer Cindy Blackman Santana sings along to music from Herbie Hancock, Davis, John Coltrane, Tony Williams, and Wayne Shorter to get her creative juices going. "I do that all the time!" she exclaimed. "It's like breathing to me. It's second nature." Blackman Santana was sharing some of the methodology behind her not-so-secret sonic sauce during a Zoom interview conducted just a few hours before she headed out to a soundcheck for one of her other gigs, as the drummer in her husband Carlos Santana's band.

"Listening to the masters influences my playing, my writing style, the flow of what I'm hearing—everything," she continued. "The way they place things—I mean, there's a reason why somebody plays something somewhere. When it comes to the people I love listening to the most, there's always a form there no matter how much they're stretching over it or whatever else they're doing. What they play on the turnaround—or what they don't play on the turnaround—sets up the next chorus, the next verse, the next go-around. All of that is really important to how the music flows and how the music sounds. Singing along with that stuff really helps me feel it."

To understand the music on her latest solo album, Coherence (Mack Avenue), it's important to understand what Blackman Santana feels and where she's coming from. Apart from a few spoken-word interludes, it's a mostly instrumental study in manifesting spiritually. It's about harnessing melody and harmony together without overwhelming either: she's a drummer after all.

"Melody and harmony are key," Blackman Santana agreed. "Because my instrument is obviously a percussive instrument. You can play the drums melodically, but it's not a melodic instrument. And I do love a beautiful melody. Oh my goodness—you can just ride on the wave of that for eons, you know? I love harmony, too. That's why Herbie Hancock is my favorite piano player, because his harmonies really make the sound—and that gives the band a sound too, in terms of the tonalities."

Given her triple role on Coherence—she's the titular artist, producer, and musical director—Blackman Santana was very much hands-on, including with quality control. "We went through a couple of iterations," she told me. "When the first test pressing of the LP came back, there wasn't enough bandwidth to give each song the quality it needed, so we had to really start cutting the number of tracks down. When the second iteration came back, it was much better. The high end was there. The bottom was there. There was much more clarity overall."

Blackman Santana was very mindful of where her drums fall in the Coherence mix. "I love drums, and I love hearing drums—the sound, the tone, the rhythm, the feel; all of that," she affirmed. "At the same time, I want the band to sound like a band. I want each person to not only be heard and featured, but I want the—quote unquote—coherence of all the parts together, because that makes up the whole song. It's not just the drums making the music—it's everybody. It's what I'm playing because of what somebody else played and my reaction to them, or it's the guitar player's reaction to the piano or the saxophone. All that makes the music, and all that makes the whole thing vibrate in a certain way. So, all that has to be heard."

During production, Blackman Santana decided to cap Coherence as a single vinyl disc. There's a tradeoff: The LP now holds only 11 songs, while the CD and digital editions contain 17. "It was really tough doing that," she said, "but I did it in order to get a couple of the pieces I really wanted on both discs, and I also wanted listeners to have slightly different playlists."

Interestingly, one cut appears only on the LP—not on the CD or on streaming services. And that vinyl-only track is a real treat: the wide-panned drumming showcase "Alkebulan," which lands toward the end of side B, just ahead of the fierce cover of Wayne Shorter's "Sanctuary," a seven-minute Bitches Brew–bred barnburner featuring Emilio Modeste on sax and Carlos Santana on guitar. The musical connection between the Santanas is palpable. In an interview conducted last year, Carlos told me that "Cindy is my favorite drummer on this planet. We are steadfast focused when we play together."

"Carlos is my equal half. The way he plays, and how he interacts between the drums and the vocal, is just incredible," Blackman Santana told me. "I connected with his music long before we met. I never actually thought of being interactive with Carlos personally at that point. I was just listening to his music, so it wasn't really something I thought of until we met and started talking about our spiritual paths. If it was just the music, I would've been too shy to even approach him. But after we met and I subbed on drums in his band, we really got to know each other—and then the spiritual connection happened. That's what grabbed me."

Spirituality is at the core of Coherence and of everything Blackman Santana does. "When people listen to Coherence, I would love for them to experience ... the feeling of, and vibration of, people creating something together as a unit," she said. "After that, I would love them to feel inspired to create. Whether they connect with a sound, a color, or a texture, it's all different, and to me, that's the beauty of it."