Santana is a band consisting of a flexible number of musicians accompanying Carlos Santana since the late 1960s. Just like Santana himself, the band is known for helping make Latin rock famous in the rest of the world.
The band was formed in 1966 in San Francisco. The first members were Carlos Santana (lead guitar), Tom Fraser (rhythm guitar), Mike Carabello (percussion), Rod Harper (drums & percussion), Gus Rodriguez (bass guitar) and Gregg Rolie (lead vocals & keyboards). In the following years the members of the group changed frequently for a number of reasons, and from 1971 to 1972 there was a brief separation between the group and Santana.
Santana himself rarely sings in his songs despite being the leader of the band and recent hits have been frequently accompanied by a guest singer, rather than the members of the band.
Europa (Earth’s Cry Heaven’s Smile)
“Europa (Earth’s Cry Heaven’s Smile)” is an instrumental from the Santana album Amigos. One of Santana’s most popular songs. It is sometimes a common staple on classic rock radio stations and oldies radio stations.
Upon seeing his friends he was suffering a bad experience while high on mescaline, Carlos composed a song titled “The Mushroom Lady’s Coming to Town”. This precursor contained the first part to the song “Europa”. It was put away and not touched for some time.
When Santana was touring with Earth, Wind & Fire in Manchester, England, he played this song again, this time with Tom Coster who helped him with some of the chords and thus Europa was born. It was renamed to “Europa (Earth’s Cry Heaven’s Smile)”.
http://djallyn.org/media/carlos-santana-europa.flv- Audio from the 1976 album, Amigos:
Break