Santana

Santana have featured numerous different musicians in an ever-fluid big band line-up, but the one constant in their four decades at the top is the innovative, visionary Mexican guitarist Carlos Santana. The last major band to emerge from the San Francisco psychedelic era of the late 1960s, they achieved huge success with their jazz-rock-Latin fusions, forged on the frontman's thrilling guitar and incessant dance rhythms. Born in Mexico on July 20, 1947, Carlos Santana moved to San Francisco from Mexico in the early 1960s, initially making his mark with the Santana Blues Band, before developing the trademark Santana conga rhythms which made them the explosive live band which achieved international fame with their famous performance at Woodstock in 1969. They struck gold on record, too, in 1971 with the chart-topping Santana III album, which produced two top 20 singles, "Everybody's Everything" and "No One to Depend On". New members came and went but Carlos Santana's reputation continued to soar, particularly after a duo album with John McLaughlin. The band's popularity faded through the '90s, but they had an unexpected revival with the chart-topping Supernatural in 1999, featuring guests Wyclef Jean, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill and Dave Matthews, and the number one single "Smooth" featuring Matchbox Twenty's Rob Thomas. The band put out their next album Shaman, but not for three years, when it debuted at number one in the US Charts. Another three years went by before All That I Am hit the charts at number two, with the band's appeal seeming to slowly dwindle. Five years passed before they released Guitar Heaven with critics and fans commenting on their change of sound, with noticeable metal influences. It charted at number five. In 2013 Santana announced a reunion of the original Woodstock line-up. Santana IV was released three years later, 45 years after the original five - Santana, Gregg Rolie, Neal Schon, Michael Carabello and Michael Shrieve - first recorded together. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200, making it their 14th top ten album. Signing to Concord Records in 2019, they released EP In Search of Mona Lisa before a full-length album titled Africa Speaks later in the year. In August 2021, Santana signed a new global record deal with BMG to release Blessings and Miracles, then performing at New York's Central Park. March 2025 saw the release of the compilation album Sentient, including various retrospective collaborations through the years with Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, Smokey Robinson, Paolo Rustichelli, and Daryl "DMC" McDaniels.