Wiping the smile off Britney Spears's Lolita face, putting a stop to the pelvic thrusting of Ricky Martin and silencing the Canadian chanteuse Celine Dion at the Grammy nomination party last Tuesday was a greying old hippie in an unfashionable tie-dye shirt and a frankly laughable pony-tail.
Veteran guitar instrumentalist Carlos Santana upset the ego cart at the bash in Los Angeles by managing to rake up a near-record 10 nominations (more than Spears, Martin and Dion put together) for the "Musical Oscars" Grammy ceremony at the end of February.
It's not just that many present were under the impression that Carlos Santana was still wandering around a field in Woodstock dressed in a kaftan and looking for his karma, it's more that his particular musical blend of AfroLatin/jazz fusion was last heard by mass audiences at the time of the Vietnam War and has since being relegated to the dustbin of musical history by so many punk rockers, hip-hoppers and trance dance practitioners.
What next? Weather Report on the cover of NME?
The irresistible rise, fall and rise again of Carlos Santana is not, however, due to the fact that a new generation of record buyers has decided that 20-minute guitar solos are the way forward. In a shrewd move of modern marketing, the current Santana album, Supernatural, meets new audiences half-way by featuring collaborations with hipper-thanthou artists such as Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean from The Fugees and the cutting-edge dance sounds of The Dust Brothers.
The first single off the album, Smooth, which duly went to number one in the US charts, was a collaboration with the massive-selling Indie band, Matchbox 20. If you can't beat them, get them to appear on your album . . .
Not that the 52-year-old musician has morphed into an Ali G and decked himself out in Tommy Hilfiger club wear and talks about his "posse". Santana still speaks as if he's hanging around Haight-Ashbury, wearing an Angela Davis T-shirt and shoving flowers down US soldiers' gun barrels.
"This CD is a miracle from beginning to end," he said in response to his 10 nominations. "Music has an enormous power, like a shaman. It takes you to a place where time doesn't exist anymore, gravity doesn't exist and fear doesn't exist."
The words "magic" and "mushrooms" spring to mind.
Before this surge of popularity, you would usually come across Santana's name only when he was being referred to (and accurately so) as "the godfather of World Music". Back in the 1960s, when others around him were trying to perfect the "British Invasion" sound for the US market, Santana and his ever-changing band were fusing together blues, rock, salsa and African polyrhythms in a sound that was largely distinguished by his own virtuoso guitar-playing style.
He was born in Mexico and introduced to his country's traditional music at an early age by his Mariachi violinist father. When the family moved to the border town of Tijuana when he was eight, the young Santana was able to pick up the nascent rock 'n' roll sound on his radio and to his family's displeasure he taught himself to play guitar by playing along to B.B. King, T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker records.
What really helped shape his sound, though, was his move to San Francisco in the early 1960s. The counter-culture "underground" was moving overground and the multi-cultural city exposed him to a variety of musical styles, with blues winning out in the early days.
He formed the Santana Blues Band in 1966 and although he was a reluctant leader, he had to lend his name to the band because the local Musicians' Union required that each band have a designated leader. Known by everyone simply as Santana, the band became regulars at the near legendary Fillmore West venue in the city. And such was their dizzy ascent that they got invited to play at Woodstock in 1968, where their instrumental Soul Sacrifice is still regarded by many as the highlight of the festival.
Their Woodstock success led to a deal with Columbia (now Sony) records and they broke through with their second album, the five-million selling Abraxas, which yielded the hit singles Black Magic Woman (famously covered by Fleetwood Mac Mark 1) and Tito Puente's Oye Como Va.
The band's personnel changed many times over a very successful career, with highlights being the Caravanserai, Love, Devotion, Surrender and Zebop albums. However, many people remember them best for their 1977 single, She's Not There.
Apart from holding the rather bizarre record of winning the most "Best Pop-Rock Guitarist" awards in the annual poll by Playboy magazine, Santana's career has been distinguished by several civic and humanitarian commendations for his work on a variety of developing world/ environmental issues. He played at the first joint US-Soviet rock concert in 1987 and has donated large sums of money to Central American aid organisations and to Native American civil rights groups.
Despite an appearance at Live Aid in 1985, over the last two decades Santana settled into a "niche" market for his music and never dented the mainstream billboard charts. He still retains a fan base that is as loyal and intense as that enjoyed by those other 1960s favourites, The Grateful Dead.
With his current album enjoying his biggest sales since his heyday (five million plus sold) and the prospect of a suitcase full of Grammys coming his way, he seems set to recapture the level of popularity he enjoyed three decades ago and to win over new converts. Or as he put it himself in the Christmas card he sent his fans last month: "Together we will crystallise our heart's intentions and life's purpose to work toward the highest good".
