Carlos Santana turned 75: a Latino who has erased the boundaries of rock

From violin to guitar, Mexican Carlos Santana built his career on his rebellion. Rejecting his father’s music, he began his own journey and made room for Latinos in rock until he became one of the most famous guitarists in the world, turning 75 this Wednesday.

“What Santana achieves with his interpretation of rock, jazz and Latin American sounds is to break down this barrier of worrying about whether he was Mexican, American or British, in the end we listened to him and made him ours, there is a lot of value in that. he has Santana for us as Latin Americans,” said Diego Pardava, host of the radio program Las rutas del rock, in an interview with EFE.

“Listening to the sound of an electric guitar in the park bouncing off the churches and the sky, it was like seeing a flying saucer for the first time,” he said. Carlos Santana (Autlán de Navarro, 1947) in an interview with the British BBC in 2012 about the day he heard guitarist Javier Batis playing in Teniente Guerrero Park in the city of Tijuana.

Standing at the door of his house with a violin in his hands and next to his mother, Batiz remembers the first meeting with the then little Carlos.

“They left it here for me, then they came for it at night and the next day they brought it in the afternoon and the lady told me that she didn’t sleep at all because of me, because I taught her the first steps (chords),” Batiz said EFE.

A LIFE DEDICATED TO MUSIC

The musician arrived in the north of the country at the age of eight, along with his entire family, following his father, José Santana, a mariachi violinist.

The public’s admiration for his father’s work led him to Carlos Santana found his calling to music at an early age, a path that led him to continue performing on stage today despite passing out during a concert in Michigan on July 6th.

With his violin, Santana began working in his father’s band in the cantinas of Tijuana, but the atmosphere of these spaces and the negativity of the songs left the little boy disgusted with ranchera music, so, despite the family’s refusal, he took the path of rock with his teacher Javier Batis in the group Los TJ’s .

For 1961 Santana He arrived with his family in the city of San Francisco, California, the cradle of the hippie movement, of which he would become a part and which would define his lifestyle.

“Santana is another migrant who, like many others, leaves in search of what their country does not offer them – opportunities for improvement. Maybe in Mexico would not be as successful as happened to the great musicians in the country who did not have a show show that USAPardave commented.

“Carlos was one of my students, but not the first, but one of the most notable. He went to the United States, and there is a country of opportunity, to do what you want, and if you work very hard, then you can do it. Here (Mexico) we are in a country where you have to fight with everything in order to be able to achieve something. , and it’s very difficult,” Batiz agrees.

THREE TIMES OF SANTANA

For National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) announcer and career rock expert Carlos Santana It can be understood in three main stages.

First at his start with the band Santanawith whom he entered the most important rock festival in history, Woodstock in 1969, and where he recorded such hits as “Hey, what’s up” or “Black Magic Woman”.

The second stage with his image as a soloist and a revival in the late 90s with his album “Supernatural”.

“It belongs to musicians who, since the 1980s, have stopped wanting to show that they have the ability to evolve. What he came to rock for, he achieved in the mid-1970s,” Pardava said.

Batiz, who has never stopped teaching musicians ever since, recalls Carlos Santana lovingly, and he now confesses that he regrets not following him when he offered to come with him to the United States.

“I have a lot of respect for him because he knew how to succeed since he was a teenager, he knew how to advance his career, he helped so many people, he is full of “vato” (male), full of love and desire to share, and that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day,” said the veteran musician.

INFLUENCE OF CARLOS SANTANA

Finally, Pardave stressed that the musical influence Carlos Santana She is so big that she even inspired musicians like The Rolling Stones, and, like a kind rebel, she will continue to exist on stage.

Santana was a pioneer in fusing Latin rhythms with the rock genre in the band of the same name he founded in 1966, and since then his figure and his music have received every possible recognition.

Among other things, they include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists in History. rolling stone.

(According to EFE)

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