Jorge Santana - Restoration CD

Restoration will stand as the final release of Jorge Santana’s storied and incredible career. He was a founding member of the Latin-rock band Malo who had a top twenty hit in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 with “Suavecito”" in 1972. He released two solo albums, “Jorge Santana” and “It's All About Love”, featuring former Malo members. In the mid-1970s he played with the Fania All-stars and was also a member of Santana. Please read the liner notes from Producer Marcia Miget below.

Marcia Miget Producer’s Notes:

In 2017 while on tour with Jorge Santana and the Legends of Latin Rock, he requested I listen to a song he’d recorded in his home studio during the late ‘80’s. He recorded musical ideas into a multi-track cassette recorder (Sony TC-D5) to which he’d add 3-4 tracks of guitar with interesting sound effects, a drum machine (Korg AR 55) and oc­casional vocals. This was a time that gave Jorge great satisfaction both as a family man and a creative musician. It was the first song ‘Wake Up” and it’s story that captured my attention, I began reworking it with the intention of maintaining the original idea, and ‘just’ expanding it.

I assumed Jorge wanted me to revisit the song for future recording/performing pos­sibilities, so I added his original tracks to my home recording studio and began experi­menting. New harmonies, grooves and additional arrangement ideas began to emerge. Upon completion of ‘Wake Up’, we were both surprised and pleased with the results. We felt this song’s RESTORATION had become a “little piece of heaven”.

As I continued to rework the remaining eight cuts, Jorge wanted to maintain the origi­nals and remix these songs with my newly added tracks. He believed the feeling of the original tracks could not be recreated, that the music carried the reflection of his life at that time. The challenge was that these were 30 years old cassette tracks! It was fortu­nate that Fantasy engineer, Adam Munoz, added his expertise to elicit the best possible sound from these tracks and my additional tracks. To the mix we also added Silvestre Martinez’s percussion and Aki Starr’s vocals (Everytime Time I see you and Sparrow).

Through the music, lives the original feeling in each song. It has been a pleasure to assist Jorge in his journey.

I hope that you will enjoy ‘Restoration’ and hear the love shining through our music!