Carlos Santana, the multi-Grammy Award winning Mexican rock
guitarist was born on July 20, 1947, in Autlán
de Navarro, Mexico.
In 2003, he was awarded the 15th spot in Rolling Stone
magazine’s list of “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. Santana has a total
of 10 Grammy Awards and 3 Latin Awards under his belt. Apart from his music, he
is also known for his work as a philanthropist. Santana’s Milagro Foundation
supports underprivileged youth in the areas of health, education and arts. When
not busy strumming up a storm with his guitar, the guitar legend uses his
culinary expertise to create Mexican dishes for his Maria Maria chain of
restaurants in California, Arizona
and Texas.
Santana was born with the music in him. His father was a
mariachi violinist, and young Santana followed in his father’s footsteps and
started playing the violin when he was just five years old. He found his true
calling when he was eight, as that is when his musical genius with the guitar
came to the forefront. Santana’s family moved to Tijuana and then on to San
Francisco during the 1960s, and in 1966, Santana formed the Santana Blues Band,
which was later shortened to just Santana. The band’s style was immediately
noticed, and their stupendous success at Woodstock
1969 was followed by the release of Santana’s first album Santana, by Columbia records. The
album made it to the fourth position on the U.S album charts, and “Evil Ways”
climbed up to the ninth position on the Billboard Hot 100.
The rest, as they say, is history. Santana’s electrifying blues guitar, combined with Latin American and
African rhythms, made the band’s second album Abraxas a super duper hit,
thanks to sensational numbers like "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye
Como Va". After multiple gold and platinum albums and major upheavals
within the band, Santana finally released his first solo album Oneness,
Silver Dreams, Golden Reality in
1979. More albums followed, both with
the band and as a solo artist, as did collaborative efforts with Buddy Miles, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter,
Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews. The title track of his 1987 album Blues for
Salvador fetched Santana his first Grammy award for Best Rock Instrumental
Performance. The year 1999 was the highlight of his musical career, with the
release of the multiple-platinum album Supernatural. The singles “Smooth” and “Maria
Maria” topped all the charts, the album sold over ten million copies, and
garnered a total of nine Grammy Awards.
Coming to his guitars, Santana
mainly played a Yamaha SG 175B till 1982, and occasionally a white Gibson SG
Custom with 3 open coil pick-ups. A custom made PRS guitar was his choice of
instrument since 1982, while now he uses a Santana II model guitar with PRS
Santana III pickups with nickel covers and a tremolo, with .009-.042 gauge D'Addario
strings. The unique tone that Santana is famous for is thanks to the use of a
single piece of solid Brazilian rosewood to create the fretboards and guitar
necks. He also uses the classical Alvarez Yairi CY127CE guitar at times. Carlos
Santana’s music has always had a global audience. The artist attributes this to
his spiritual nature, which, he says, has given this universal appeal to his
music. The artist has stated in most interviews that his music knows no borders
and that is the way it should be. In one particular interview, Santana had
said, “I have the courage to say I transcended and graduated being American
or Mexican or all that kind of stuff. I have no allegiance or alliance to any
flag or country”. The world agrees. |
