The Definition Of Music: Carlos Santana

BIOGRAPHY
Taken from Carlos Santana official website

Delivered with a level of passion and soul equal to the legendary sonic charge of his guitar, the sound of Carlos Santana is one of the world's best-known musical signatures. For more than four decades – from Santana's earliest days as a groundbreaking Afro-Latin-blues-rock fusion outfit in San Francisco – Carlos has been the visionary force behind artistry that transcends musical genres and generational, cultural and geographical boundaries.

Long before the category now known as "world music" was named, Santana's ever-evolving sound has always been ahead of its time in its universal appeal, and today registers as ideally in sync with the 21st century's pan-cultural landscape. And, with a dedication to humanitarian outreach and social activism that parallels his lifelong relationship with music; Carlos Santana is as much an exemplary world citizen as a global music icon.

Carlos Santana's current project is Supernatural Santana: A Trip Through The Hits a musical retrospective created for the new Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Santana is the first act to hold a residency at the spectacular, newly-expanded venue, and the band will perform 72 times at the Joint over the course of 2009 and 2010. The show, debuting in May 2009, includes Santana numbers ranging from "Jingo" — the group's first-ever charting single — and early classics including "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va" through the Supernatural "Smooth" years and the group's 2008 hit "Into the Night."

Carlos' influence and idealism is also felt in the groundbreaking new project Architects of a New Dawn (www.aoand.com) a multi-platform media enterprise and social network designed to empower like-minded people from all walks of life to create positive change in the global community. The project grew out of a vision Carlos has been developing for almost 20 years to engage his worldwide audience with extraordinary music, progressive media content and transformational ideas. It is all in the service of building — architecting — a new reality for the planet based on inspiration, creativity, love and forgiveness.

Santana's star arrived in the era-defining late-1960s San Francisco Bay Area music scene with historic shows at the Fillmore and other venues. They emerged onto the global stage with an epic set at “Woodstock '69”, the same year that their self-titled debut LP came out. Introducing Santana's first Top 10 hit, "Evil Ways," the disc stayed on Billboard's album chart for 2 years, and was soon followed by two more classics — and Billboard #1 albums — Abraxas and Santana III.

Forty years and as many albums later, Santana has sold more than 100 million records and reached over 100 million fans at concerts around the globe. To date, Santana has won ten GRAMMY® Awards and three Latin GRAMMYs. 1999's Supernatural — which has sold more than 26 million copies worldwide — including 9 GRAMMYs including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for "Smooth;" it is the most honored record in GRAMMY history. In 1998, the group was ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; its web page notes, "Guitarist Carlos Santana is one of rock's true virtuosos and guiding lights." Among many other honors, Carlos Santana has also been cited by Rolling Stone as #15 on their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," and #90 on their 2005 survey of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time."

Most recently, Carlos Santana is the recipient of the Billboard Latin Music Awards' 2009 Lifetime Achievement honor (he also received Billboard's Century Award in 1996), and commemorated the 10th Anniversary of Supernatural with a re-release - Supernatural (Legacy Edition) - featuring outtakes, remixes and unreleased material from the original recording sessions. This follows up 2007's Ultimate Santana, the only single-disc collection uniting hits from the group's recent albums for Arista and classics from their Columbia years.

As profound as his artistic legacy is Carlos' dedication to humanitarian work. His Milagro Foundation established by Carlos Santana and his family in 1998, has granted more than three million dollars to non-profit programs supporting underserved children and youth in the areas of arts, education and health. Milagro means "miracle” and the image of children as divine miracles of light and hope— as gifts to our lives— is the inspiration behind its name.