Consuming the Tangible

Listening to Dakila reminded me that a few months ago I finally caved in and bought a copy of Santana’s Abraxas — and have yet to really dig into it. That’s how similar the vibes are between the legendary guitarist/band and this sole offering from the San Francisco-based Philippine acid rock group. That’s a shame, because Dakila the album has the kind of searing leads, polyrhythmic percussion, and a psychic sensibility between the members — this should have been much, much bigger than it is. So thank the gods Guerssen Records gave it a fantastic reissue in 2022, allowing me to get my grubby little hands on it.

Established and running in the same circles as Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and, yes, Santana, it would stand to reason some of that scene’s sound would work its way into the music. Between the emphasis on percussion (Dakila features a drummer, a conga player, and a separate timbales player), the emphasis on the cosmic and universal hippy-dip in the lyrics and…oh yeah, the incendiary guitar work of vocalist/guitarist Paul Bustamante and guitarist Bert Ancheta it would be easy enough to 1) write the band off as just another late ’60s pastiche if you don’t dig it, or 2) never really dig into the music, content to like it for exactly the same reason the folks in 1) hate it.

The question in my mind, however, becomes its usual tangle of half-connected thoughts and talents, but goes a little something like this:

“Hey okay so this is a lot like Santana I like Santana, I mean I think I like Santana, I bought Abraxas and I love that song Changes from the Zebop! album but was that because I really like it or am I nostalgic for the time I first heard that song, and how I heard it…anyway yeah I like this and I like how it zigs between heavy jammy guitar and organ jams but then there’s left field orchestrated bubblegum pop love songs which I guess speaks to the fact they got a deal with Epic Records so now I wonder how much of this stuff is marketing around the whole “these guys are different because of their Philippine heritage integrated into the music” thing but then how would I even distinguish whether it was Philippine or more Latin rock which Paul Bustamante said was what he was into, having grown up in Texas before heading out to SF, but then does any of that actually matter when I can listen to “Gozala” which yeah sure the similarity to a certain Santana song is too close for comfort but I dig it and oh man the soloing on it and “Persiguiendo” and the way the opening jam of “Makibaka” opens into the second half called “Ikálat” and it’s 11 minutes of serotonin shot right into my brain and sure when it gets to the soppy stuff I kinda tune out but this is hoot and, hey – what’s that treat doing under that box? Let me go see what happens if I knock that stick over trying to get it…”

You get the point. You can spin yourself in circles trying to accurately discern Dakila and Dakila’s place in the Rock Hierarchy. At the end of the day I just go back to the things I look for: does the guitar kill? Is the percussion doing more than just keeping the beat? What does it do for me?

Right now, it makes me happy. The way the jams extend out on the opening and closing tracks — the Santana of it all. I bet Dakila were incredible live, and had Epic pushed the marketing a bit more, maybe we’d be talking about them today.

Now where did I put that copy of Abraxas?