Santana, Carlos

▪ 2001

      By winning three Latin Grammys and nine Grammy Awards—including Album of the Year for Supernatural and Song of the Year for “Smooth”—Latino rocker Carlos Santana staged a comeback of millennial proportions in 2000. At age 52 he fell somewhere between youthful phenoms Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez at one end of the new wave of Latin pop music and the Cuban elder statesmen of The Buena Vista Social Club at the other. Supported by such notable collaborators as pop rocker Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20, hip-hop luminary Lauryn Hill, fellow guitar legend Eric Clapton, and former Arista Records head Clive Davis, Santana crafted a pop gem.

      Santana was born on July 20, 1947, in Autlán de Navarro, Mex., and began playing the violin at age five; by age eight, however, he had switched to the guitar. As a teenager he played in bands in Tijuana, Mex., where he was exposed not only to the local Norteño music but to blues, especially to guitarists T-Bone Walker and B.B. King. Although his family moved to San Francisco in the 1960's, Santana returned frequently to Tijuana. Influenced by the San Francisco Bay Area's burgeoning rock scene, in 1966 he formed the Santana Blues Band, which came to the attention of rock music impresario Bill Graham. The band began performing at the legendary club Fillmore West and, though largely unknown, triumphed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969.

      Signed to Columbia, Santana (“Blues Band” had been dropped from the band's name) released a series of hit albums that infused rock with a Latin feel rooted in Afro-Cuban rhythms and that centred on Carlos's extraordinary lead-guitar playing, characterized by the distinctive sustaining of individual notes that became his trademark. Santana, featuring the top-10 hit “Evil Ways,” peaked at number four on the album charts in 1969; Abraxas, with the hits “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va,” reached number one the next year. Santana III (1971) and Caravanserai (1972) followed. Over the next two decades, however, the group's output was more uneven—and less commercially successful—as Santana led ever-shifting personnel toward a jazz-rock fusion that reflected his admiration for Miles Davis and John Coltrane and resulted in collaborations with jazz artists such as Buddy Miles, Stanley Clarke, and John McLaughlin. Having earlier shown an interest in the philosophy of Sri Chimnoy, Santana became a born-again Christian in 1992. Meditation and mysticism became central to his life, and Santana began to see himself as a musical shaman whose pursuit of songs that offered hope and healing culminated in Supernatural. In 1998 Santana's lasting contribution was marked by his group's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Jeff Wallenfeldt

* * *