Carlos Santana Portrait

Carlos Santana, photographed here in 1972 by Herb Greene, is a guitarist and songwriter who infused rock and roll with Latin rhythms, spiritual visions, jazz improvisation, and African musical practices. Born and raised in Mexico, Santana was integral to the 1960s San Francisco music scene and a leading force of the multiethnic countercultural imagination: he gave historic performances at the Fillmore West and Woodstock while his albums went platinum. Santana’s slow, piercing guitar solos combine blues feeling with jazz phrasing, and they set off the band’s pan–Latin American rhythmic foundation as drawn from boogaloo, salsa, funk, Cuban rhythms, and the early rock and roll of Ritchie Valens. His quest for spiritual music practices led him deeper into jazz (via John Coltrane and Miles Davis), then into Indian ragas (via John McLaughlin), and then to African music. His 1999 song "Smooth" was an apt global hit at the turn of the millennium.