Review: Santana takes the ethnic route at the Borgata

For the last several summers in Atlantic City, sage guitarist and all-around-brand Carlos Santana (he's got his own shoes, cologne, and tequila) has opened up and hit on his roots as a Mexican-born titan of psychedelic rock and Latin music. Last year's album, Corazón, was his first to celebrate his ethnic heritage in funky yet traditional fashion while conjuring rope-a-doping rhythms and scorching guitar lines.

On Friday, in a live setting - the Borgata's big room for the first of two sold-out shows - he allowed all his varied ethnographic sounds and histories to mingle like a zesty, spicy posole.

To be clear, this weekend wasn't the promised reunion of the ferocious guitarist's eponymous band that wound up comprising Journey. (Maybe 2016?) Nor did the evening feature his power-jazz drumming wife, Cindy Blackman Santana. (It did highlight son Salvador playing keyboards and rap-singing handsomely to such tunes as his own "Fantasy Reality.")

The show was an exemplary, communal roar of a bakers' dozen of crack Latino-centric players - and Santana - having a ball with no hokum or middle-of-the-road rock, save for a timbale-heavy version of "Smooth" that segued into "Dame tu amor."

Organist/pianist Dave Matthews (not that one!) led the pack with a massive swelling grind (and a battery of traditionally percussive salsa runs), and the ensemble ran quickly through "Soul Sacrifice" and "Saideira" with frenetic, jam-band glee. While the group built, then settled into, that clave-cracking, fast-paced groove, the guitarist kicked into blistering solo mode immediately, running down the voodoo as singers Tony Lindsay and Andy Vargas introduced the brassy "Freedom in Your Mind." Each went back and forth on its lead and harmonized behind the other, while Santana snaked out a solo that borrowed from George Gershwin's "Summertime," with every ascending note sounding woozier and sadder than the one before.

The guitarist found poetry in the riffs of "Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile)" as slow, jazzy solo lines rang out with alarming crystalline clarity - truly Santana's signature move. Despite anyone, including Santana, soloing, this was an ensemble piece, a wall whose bricks were symmetrically laid. With every spirited hit - say, such 1960's classics as "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen" and his pulsing, psychedelic cover of Tito Puente's "Oye Como va" - the master would sneak out something clever, tender and loud from behind that wall. He quoted from "Paint It Black" and the slithery "Black Magic Woman," and made a tender dexterous run at "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" before moving into an impassioned "Toussaint L'Overture."

Santana proved that, at 68, he still has it - and he didn't sound as if he's going to give it up anytime soon.