Santana: Blues, Beliefs and Beyond : Festival: Musician, who plays in Orange County on Sunday, says legends’ spirits help remind him that he has far to go. He also sees room for personal growth.

Miles Davis and Bill Graham may have departed this world, but Carlos Santana doesn’t feel they’re done with him yet. His band’s current album, “Milagro,” is dedicated to his friends, the late jazz giant and the legendary concert promoter, and it is arguably Santana’s stormiest, most soulfully engaged set in ages. He says the force of the music is a direct result of their influence.

“Absolutely, Miles Davis and Bill Graham still knock in my consciousness, in my dreams and in my thoughts,” the guitarist said recently by phone from his home in San Rafael. “And they’re very persistent. I don’t know if it’s because they wanted me to fulfill some of their agenda that they didn’t finish or what, but they’re still very brutal about how they assault me at night in my dreams.

“I’m serious. These people come to my dreams and they’re very specific in a lot of ways, about how they motivate and empower me not to take any stuff from people, not to do any okey-dokey for anybody. The last things they each said to me (when they were alive) were very encouraging. Miles wasn’t much on compliments, but he told me, ‘You come around and my musicians get nervous.’ And Bill had said, ‘Your music has a combination of spirituality and sensuality, and I think that you should face it.’ They were very specific about letting me know in some kind of way that I should take more charge of my destiny and music, and boogie.”

One might think Santana was already doing well enough at that. The 45-year-old Jalisco, Mexico, native fused one of the most distinctive sounds of the late ‘60s, mixing rock and roiling Latin rhythms with his forcefully melodic guitar lines. His then little-known Bay Area-based band became one of the show-stealing sensations of 1969’s Woodstock festival. In subsequent decades he has stretched into jazz--recently undertaking a challenging tour with sax great Wayne Shorter--while reaching new generations of rock fans in his concerts (he headlines a blues bill at the Pacific Amphitheatre today).

But the nagging spirits of his friends remind him to continue growing and evolving.

“I’m practicing my guitar more, learning,” he said. “I still feel like I don’t know anything . I’m not insecure, but I go and hang out with Wayne Shorter or John Lee Hooker and when I hear them play I feel like a 2-year-old in the crib.

“Those are like lessons in humility. It doesn’t make me frustrated, but it makes me hungry to learn more about everything: African music, American Indian music, South American.

“My other challenges right now are to be a better father, a better husband and, basically, just be a person, like Wayne Shorter says. That’s the biggest challenge, because most musicians are pitiful when it comes to domestic life. . . . When I go play, I’m a musician. When I’m home, I’m a person, not a personality. I’ve never been into personality.”

*

Like his San Francisco contemporaries the Grateful Dead, Santana finds he’s playing for a multi-generational audience nowadays, including listeners who weren’t even born until a decade and half after his Woodstock appearance. And like the Dead, Santana has little radio support to account for that audience.

“Our audiences are growing younger. There’s people now who are 13 or 14, along with 60-year-olds, 40-year-olds, green mohawks, straight suits, all of it. My music is not only for middle white America like Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen. That stuff is bought, bought from the get-go. (Record companies) buy time for people like Michael Bolton or Mariah Carey and they pay people not to play anything else.

*

“Radio gives music a bad name. There’s a lot of bands who are constantly in rotation on radio and MTV, but if they were just playing by themselves in front of Macy’s they wouldn’t get that much money in the hat, I bet you. But kids are not stupid. They can only take a musical ‘Friday the 13th, Part 57’ so many times. That’s why the Grateful Dead and Santana are really big. Radio doesn’t play my music much, but they also don’t play Miles or Jimi Hendrix or Bob Marley. So I’m in good company.”

He said it’s time to “pinch” people in a gentle way to shake up the consciousness of the nation, “like we did in the ‘60s.” As signs that that can happen, he pointed to the domestic success of acts such as Metallica or Nirvana, which built up such a following without mainstream radio support that radio had to begin playing them. He also noted that other countries have proved the eclecticism the United States had in the late ‘60s still works.

“If you go to Paris, what they play on the radio would shock you, because they play Louis Armstrong, Ravi Shankar, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, everything that’s music. Over here it’s Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey, Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. Variety is the spice of life, and that’s what we need here. Why go to an ice cream store and only come out with vanilla every time?”

Despite the passing of such giants as Davis in recent years, Santana still hears a lot of American music he likes: “This young guy Eric Gales is a great guitar player who is picking up from Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. We still, by the grace of God, have Wayne Shorter, who is probably the last of the Stravinsky-Einstein minds in music. There’s still Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and people like that who are really supreme in their own way. There’s still B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy, still a lot of people who kick butt.”

*

Recent favorite releases of his include Davis’ last album “Doo Bop” and Garland Jeffries’ “Don’t Call Me Buckwheat.” He also enjoys the music of his recent tour-mate, Phish, which plays the Coach House on Monday night.

“They’re kind of like the Grateful Dead,” Santana said of Phish, “in the sense that they’re very open to Ornette Coleman and Buddy Guy and all of it. They don’t only zero in on one thing. They don’t have a Ph.D. in Eric Clapton, where that’s all they play. They’re very unpretentious. We’ve jammed on some of the shows, and we can learn from them, and they can learn from us.”

Asked what he tries to convey with his own music, Santana said: “No borders, no flags. When people cry and laugh at the same time in our concerts, then I know we’ve touched them. I’ve learned that the best music you can play is when you’re channeling. It has nothing to do with you, your mama or your ancestors. You become a host: Music is the water, people are flowers.

“My beliefs are the same as Bob Marley or Martin Luther King’s: Together we can get to the Promised Land. The Promised Land is not distance or time, it’s an awakening of consciousness. What I try to do with my music is unify people to boogie with one heartbeat.”

He’s made a study of several religions and for several years was a devotee of fellow guitarist John McLaughlin’s guru, Sri Chinmoy. Now, he says, “I don’t subscribe to any religion. I’m into spirituality. I learned a lot about Eastern religions, but I think the American Indians have the most clean spiritual water, because in their philosophy they want clean air, clean water, clean consciousness, and it stands out for the highest good of all concerned. In our religions, if you don’t believe the way they want you to believe they just send you to hell, you know?

“So I don’t believe in religions. Religion and politics is the same, they’re like pimps to me. It’s a corrupt business and I don’t subscribe to it anymore. I have awakened to a new reality, which is the American Indian reality. Grab the earth and smell it, and when you do that, when you’re connected to the earth, you don’t have to watch TV to see if it’s going to rain tomorrow or not.”

Santana joins B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Dr. John and the Fabulous Thunderbirds in a blues festival on Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Amphitheatre, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. $19.25 to $27.50. (714) 740-2000.