The Great Guitar Rock Band – Santana

The Mexican rock guitarist who gained individual popularity in the 1960s and popularity along with his rock band in the 1970s is known as Carlos Alberto Santana Barragon. He was born in Mexico, at Autlan de Navarro in Jalisco on 20th July 1947. At present he is 64 years of age. He is a musician as well as a songwriter and has a strong foothold in various different genres like Latin rock, Rock blues rock, Chicago rock, Jazz, free Jazz, fusion Jazz, pop, Tejano music and salsa. The command he has over his musical instruments; guitar, violin and percussion are flabbergasting.

Santana is also an electrifying vocalist. In the late 1990s he experienced resurgence of fame and great critical acclamation. The numbers of awards in Carlos Santana’s kitty are no less; he has won 3 awards in the Latin Grammy section and 10 Grammy awards. The Rolling Stone magazine enlisted 100 great guitarists of all times in 2003 and Carlos Santana was the fifteenth on the list.

In the late 1960s, Carlos Santana founded a rock band that basically centered around him called Santana. This band which was born in San Francisco, California, U.S. was also called Santana Blues Band. It has been in existence since 1967 till date. The genres that the band has great acclamation in are Blues rock, Psychedelic rock, Latin rock, Funk rock and Jazz fusion.

The performance that brought the band – Santana notoriety, splendor and stardom was the performance in 1969 at the Woodstock Festival of the song ‘Soul Sacrifice’. This song gained prominence and adoration because of its characteristic Latin Rock that set it apart from all the other performances on roll at the festival. Their first ever album was released in August, 1969 and was called Santana. Due to the stupendous performance at the Woodstock Festival the band’s first album was a great hit, both among the critics as well as the common public. This album mainly constituted of instrumental music and was produced by Carlos Santana himself. It was produced under the label of Columbia and the genres it combined were Blues rock, Latin rock and Jazz fusion. This album brought Carlos Santana yet another ranking in the Rolling Stone magazine. In the list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, Santana was ranked 150 in 2003. The album reached its all time high and was ranked number #4 on the Billboard 200 chart for pop album. This album was followed suit in the next two years by two albums Abraxas and Santana III.

The band Santana never quite lost the Latin influence although it allowed many other genres and music to be involved. Esoteric music was introduced in the band’s music by Sri Chinmoy.

The band was quite legendary and extraordinary and they managed to bag quite a lot of awards and lists of fame. The band along with Carlos Santana, Michael Shrieve, David Brown, Jose Chepito Areas, Mike Carabello and Greg Rollie were honored and conscripted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. The band Santana received 3 Grammy Awards in the Latin category and a total of 8 Grammy Awards all in the year 2000. Carlos Santana himself has won various individual Grammy Awards.

The journey of the band and Carlos Santana himself has been quite sensational and inspirational.