Carlos Santana and Chad Smith Explore the Spiritual Power of Drummers

Carlos Santana has spent decades standing at the front of the stage, but in a filmed conversation with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, he made clear where he believes the real power in a band originates. "A drummer can lift you out of your existence," Santana told Smith, offering a perspective that every percussionist who has ever felt overlooked will want to hear at full volume.

The conversation was captured on August 9, 2013, during rehearsals for DRUM! Night at the San Jose Repertory Theater in San Jose, California. It became the centerpiece of a special video edition of Chad Smith's MusicRadar interview series, "In Conversation," presented by MusicRadar in association with Drum Channel, who filmed and edited the clip. The full exchange was released in two installments: the first published on September 23, 2013, with the concluding part following on Monday, September 30, 2013. The complete two-part interview is available in the entertainment section on DrumChannel.com.

An unexpected meeting at DRUM! Night

Santana's presence at the rehearsals was not preplanned as an interview opportunity. According to Smith, the guitarist arrived at DRUM! Night to support his wife, and the conversation grew organically from there. Smith, a six-time Grammy Award-winning percussionist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, described the encounter with characteristic warmth: "Carlos, a Legend, needs no introduction. It was a real surprise when he came to support his wife at DRUM! Night and then agreed to sit down and chat with me. What a soulful man. Check it out… inspiring. Thanks, Carlos!"

That spontaneity comes through in the interview itself. Rather than a rehearsed promotional exchange, the dialogue moves into genuinely philosophical territory, with one of the most celebrated and influential guitarists of the last 40 years making an extended, heartfelt case for the drummer as the emotional spine of any performance.

The drummer's role: grace, not just timekeeping

Santana's most striking contribution to the conversation is his articulation of what drums actually do to a listener. Beyond keeping time or driving a groove, he frames the drummer's function as something closer to spiritual transport. "A drummer can lift you out of your existence," he said, and he backed that claim with personal history. Even as a teenager playing the clubs of Tijuana, Santana said he understood that "the drummer's role was very important." That early recognition clearly stuck: decades later, performing for stadiums full of people, his reverence for the instrument has only deepened.

His most poetic formulation comes in four words: "the language of the drum is grace." For drummers who spend their careers defending the relevance of their instrument to non-musicians, that sentence lands like a full-kit fill into a chorus. It reframes the drum kit not as a rhythmic engine but as a medium for something more elevated, a language capable of carrying grace the way melody carries melody.

Transcendence, authenticity, and the live performance equation

The second installment of the conversation moves into the metaphysical nature of live performance, which is where Santana's ideas become most distinctive. He coined the word "transcen-dance," deliberately hyphenated to link transcendence and dancing, arguing that audiences come to live shows seeking something that goes beyond the mechanical execution of songs. "People need transcen-dance with the dance," he explained, pressing the point that musicians must move past technique and into genuine connection.

His prescription for reaching that connection is direct and uncompromising: "Genuine, honest, sincere, truthful, real and authentic - anything else that you do will be natural and normal." The implication is that authenticity is not just a virtue but a practical method. When a musician achieves it, everything else, including the audience's emotional response, follows naturally. For drummers, who often anchor a band's emotional temperature before a single note is played, Santana's framework places them at the center of the entire live experience rather than at its rhythmic edge.

The "In Conversation" series and its format

"In Conversation" is Chad Smith's ongoing MusicRadar interview series in which he sits down with fellow musicians for extended, candid dialogue. MusicRadar, a division of Future PLC and described as the premier musician-centered website, has hosted the series as a podcast interview format, with the Santana edition marking a notable expansion into video. The Drum Channel collaboration brought production values that a standard podcast wouldn't allow, with the San Jose Repertory Theater's rehearsal atmosphere providing an appropriately charged backdrop for a conversation about live performance.

MusicRadar US Editor Joe Bosso, who wrote the accompanying article and whose background spans Guitar World, Guitar Player, Classic Rock, Guitar Aficionado, and a stint as VP of A&R at Island Records, described what made the Santana installment stand out from the rest of the series. "In all of Chad's conversations, with music's brightest stars, he has done more than simply get inside the music; he shoots straight into a musician's heart and soul," Bosso wrote. "With Carlos Santana, he achieves something rare, establishing a cosmic consciousness about the art of live performance, something that artists understand from their vantage point and fans know from another perspective. This dialogue brings the two views together."

That framing captures why the interview resonates so specifically with drummers. Santana is speaking from the front-of-stage perspective, describing what it feels like to receive the drummer's energy, while Smith is the drummer himself, hearing that articulation from someone he respects enormously. The exchange collapses the usual distance between the two vantage points.

Production and credits

The video was filmed and edited by Drum Channel and presented by MusicRadar in association with Drum Channel. MusicRadar extended thanks to Don Lombardi, Andy Doershuck, Laura Glass, and Adam Fells for making the production possible, alongside Smith and Santana themselves.

For drummers who want to absorb the full conversation rather than excerpts, the complete two-part interview lives in the entertainment section at DrumChannel.com. The first installment covers Santana's foundational ideas about the drummer's inspirational role; the second digs into the metaphysics of live performance and the concept of transcen-dance. Together, they form one of the more unusual pieces of drumming-focused content available: a legendary guitarist explaining, with genuine conviction, why the person behind the kit is the one holding the entire emotional architecture of a show together.

Santana's closing philosophy is worth sitting with regardless of where you are in your playing journey. Mechanics matter, technique matters, but according to one of rock's most decorated performers, the ceiling of what a drummer can achieve is not measured in tempo accuracy or fill complexity. It is measured in grace.