I remember, as a seventh grader playing in the symphonic band, being excited because our band director had just handed out the sheet music to “Oye Como Va.” I didn’t know it at the time, but this ground-breaking song, originally written by Tito Puente, propelled the iconic Carlos Santana to stardom and single-handedly defined an entire genre of rock music.

Now if you shudder at the concept of 12 and 13 year old boys and girls playing hard-driving latin rock with clarinets and trombones and flutes and trumpets, then you know what was to be inevitable. Our hapless band director would count out the tempo, then the entire band—driven by the hormonally-imbalanced adrenal glands of the drum section—would launch into the song about three times faster, five times louder, and sixty eight times sloppier. There was simply no way to stop the acceleration when we tried to play this song…