This day (July 20, 1947), in Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, México, is born Carlos Augusto Santana Alves simply known as Carlos Santana, a Mexican and American rock guitarist..
Tracklist :
1 . Evil Ways (w/ Santana, Woodstock, 1969)
2 . Black Magic Woman (w/ Santana, DICK CAVETT SHOW, 1970)
3 . Jungle Strut (w/ Santana, 1971)
4 . Europa (1976)
5 . Revelations (Chicago, 1977)
6 . All I ever wanted (Dortmund, 1980)
7 . Sensitive Kind (WTD Tomorrow show with Tom Snyder, 1981)
8 . Blowin’ in the Wind (w/ Bob Dylan)
9 . Live Aid (w/ Pat Metheny, 1985)
10 . El Mar (1987)
11 . Elegant People (w/ Wayne Shorter, Montreux 1988)
12 . The Healer (w/ Santana, 1989)
13 . I Love You Much Too Much (Golden Gate Park, 1991)
14 . Why Can’t We Live Together (w/ Santana,Santiago, 1992)
15 . Black Magic Woman (w/ Santana,1993)
16 . En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor (Warsaw, 1994)
17 . Vamonos Guajira (w/ Santana & Escola Nova De Samba, 1996)
18 . Maggot Brain (w/ Julian Lage, 1997)
19 . Latin Grammy (w/ P.O.D., 2002)
20 . Apache (w/ Wayne Shorter, 2003)
21 . Day Of Celebration (Hymns For Peace , Montreux, 2004
22 . Adouma (w/ Santana, 2005)
23 . La Viola (Argentina, 2006)
24 . Into The Night (w/ Santana, Chad Kroeger)
25 . Curación (Sunlight on Water)
26 . Samba Pa Ti (w/ Santana, Viña del Mar, 2009)
1 . While My Guitar Gently Weeps (w/ Santana)
1 . Maria Maria (w/ Santana, Montreux, 2011)
1 . Happy Birthday (Wembley Arena, 2013)
1 . Dar um Jeito (We Will Find a Way) (2014)
1 . Besos de Lejos (w/ Gloria Estefan)
1 . High Time We Went (w/ Eric Clapton, Hyde Park, 2018)
1 . Breaking Down The Door (w/ Buika) (2019)
1 . (w/ Taj Farrant) – @ Las Vegas (2020)
Tracklist :
Black Magic Woman . Samba Pa Ti . Oye Como Va . Soul Sacrifice . Smooth . Evil Ways . Bella . Europa . Maria Maria . Jingo .
Thanks to the following musicians : acdckisszeppelin . BTCharlie . César Muñoz . Chris English . Cifra Club . deaktee . EricBlackmonGuitar . Geneguitarlessons . Guitar Lessons BobbyCrispy . GuitarLessons365Song . Immaterial Music . Instrumentalretard . mahalodotcom . martyzsongs . privettricker . santanamania . Shutup & Play – Guitar Tutorials . Zico Teixeira
PROLOGUE
Early years — before continuity becomes tension. Music is already present, but it has not yet taken on an expressive function. It circulates as an inherited skill, a family activity governed by economics, a practice that precedes any formulated interiority. For Carlos Santana, childhood does not open with discovery, but with constrained transmission, repetitive, almost administrative, where the instrument does not distinguish the player but places him within an ongoing chain of gestures.
Autlán de Navarro is not a point of origin, but a point of passage. An agricultural town, musically active yet economically fragile, it offers opportunities to play without guaranteeing continuity. José Santana, the father, practices an old and unstable trade: a violinist trained in classical music, later leading mariachi ensembles, he plays for celebrations, ceremonies, dances, moving from contract to contract, rehearsing constantly. Music is not personal expression. It is professional maintenance. It demands presence, endurance, precision. It does not protect.
Carlos is born in July 1947 into this already saturated system. Training begins early, without staging. Violin at five, guitar at eight. Gestures are corrected, repeated, evaluated. Error is not dramatic; it is inefficient. Music is neither refuge nor escape. It is a task.
The move to Tijuana does not introduce symbolic rupture, but a shift in regime. Autlán is no longer sufficient. The border city promises more gigs, more venues, more audiences. It also imposes greater exposure to competition and noise. The border is not conceptualized. It is crossed.
Tijuana intensifies everything. Mariachi remains, but no longer organizes the entire soundscape. San Diego radio brings in rock’n’roll, R&B, blues. Clubs along Avenida Revolución host hybrid bands, play for noisy, indifferent tourists. The electric guitar circulates as a tool for sonic survival. Carlos observes, listens, compares. The violin recedes. The guitar takes over without declaration.
The father tolerates this shift without guiding it. The mother opens access. It is Josefina who takes her son to Parque Teniente Guerrero, a public space where bands perform outdoors. Los TJ’s, led by Javier Bátiz, dominate the stage. Carlos watches closely. He does not idealize. He analyzes. Vibrato, tension, relation to blues. Learning happens through visual repetition, not instruction.
Integration occurs laterally. Roadie first, then bassist. Carrying amplifiers, observing soundchecks, playing when allowed. Nights stretch in strip clubs, often between performances, in front of audiences demanding only volume and duration. The repertoire is imposed: electric blues, American R&B, covers repeated to exhaustion. Music becomes physical endurance. Hold, repeat, hold again.
During this period, an episode occurs that does not produce visible rupture but alters the texture of childhood. Between ages ten and twelve, Carlos is subjected to repeated sexual abuse by an American man close to the family, who regularly takes him from Tijuana to San Diego. The event generates neither break nor narrative. It is added. It is buried. At this stage, nothing is interpreted. Silence functions as continuity.
Leaving Los TJ’s is not symbolic. Carlos wants to play lead guitar. He leaves a group that does not offer that space. He joins other bands, still within Tijuana’s bars. The logic remains: find a place to hold the instrument he has chosen. No manifesto. No declared break.
The next migration involves the entire family. San Francisco becomes the new point of fixation. José finds more stable work. The children follow. Carlos remains for a time in Tijuana, then crosses the border around 1963. The Mission District absorbs him. A dense, working-class Latino neighborhood, noisy, saturated with music and fragile solidarities. Apartments are small. Jobs are temporary. Music is everywhere.
School does not provide a center. Carlos attends middle school, then high school, without finding continuity. He leaves quickly. Works as a dishwasher, plays in the streets, accepts gigs in small clubs. Music remains both subsistence and testing ground. Nothing is stabilized.
The Mission juxtaposes without hierarchy. American blues and soul, barrio Latin music, modal jazz, emerging psychedelic rock coexist in the same streets. Carlos listens to everything. He does not synthesize. He accumulates. The political and cultural movements of the Bay Area remain background, not program. Music moves faster than discourse.
In 1966, the Santana Blues Band forms. Not as theoretical project, but practical solution. Local musicians, rehearsals in the neighborhood, gigs in bars. Electric blues already intersects with Latin percussion. The sound does not aim to distinguish itself. It distinguishes itself through repeated use.
A jam at the Fillmore, on a guitar left on stage, opens access to a wider circuit. Bill Graham notices. Gigs follow. The episode closes nothing. It adds to an already ongoing series of movements.
What forms in these years is neither claimed identity nor transformation narrative. It is continuity under tension: discipline inherited from the father, mobility imposed by economics, early exposure to adult violence, silence maintained as survival condition. Music does not repair. It maintains.
The career begins afterward.
Here, everything is already active: repetition, the border, endurance, and the early-acquired capacity to hold together elements that elsewhere contradict each other.
The text stops before.