"Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)" is an

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...

from the

Santana Santana may refer to: Transportation * Volkswagen Santana, an automobile * Santana Cycles, manufacturer of tandem bicycles * Santana Motors, a former Spanish automobile manufacturer Boats * Santana 20, an American sailboat design by W. D. Sch ...

album '' Amigos'', written by

Carlos Santana Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán (; born July 20, 1947) is an American guitarist who rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band Santana, which pioneered a fusion of Rock and roll and Latin American jazz. Its sound featured ...

and

Tom Coster Tom Coster (born August 21, 1941) is an American keyboardist, composer, and longtime backing musician for Carlos Santana. Early years Detroit-born and San Francisco-raised, Coster played piano and accordion as a youth, continuing his studies ...

. It is one of Santana's most popular compositions and it reached the top in the Spanish Singles Chart in July 1976. The 16-bar chord progression follows the Circle of Fifths, similar to the

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

standard " Autumn Leaves". Every other verse ends with a Picardy cadence.

Genesis

Upon seeing a friend suffering a bad experience whilst high on

mescaline Mescaline or mescalin (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a naturally occurring psychedelic protoalkaloid of the substituted phenethylamine class, known for its hallucinogenic effects comparable to those of LSD and psilocybin. Biological sou ...

, Santana composed a piece titled "The Mushroom Lady's Coming to Town". This precursor contained the first lick to "Europa". The piece was put away and not touched for some time. When Santana was touring with

Earth, Wind & Fire Earth, Wind & Fire (EW&F or EWF) is an American band whose music spans the genres of jazz, R&B, soul, funk, disco, pop, big band, Latin, and Afro pop. They are among the best-selling bands of all time, with sales of over 90 million re ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, England, he played this tune again, this time with Tom Coster who helped him with some of the chords and thus Europa was born. It was renamed as "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)". Several reports claim that when Carlos Santana visited the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

in 1987, a controversy arose as some said the Armenian composer Arno Babajanian recognised the first eight measures of Europa, when he first heard it, as his own composition "Мосты" ("Bridges"), released in 1959.

Other versions

One rendition was by

saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

Gato Barbieri Leandro "Gato" Barbieri (November 28, 1932 – April 2, 2016) was an Argentine jazz tenor saxophonist who rose to fame during the free jazz movement in the 1960s and is known for his Latin jazz recordings of the 1970s. His nickname, Gato, is Spa ...

off his 1976 album ''Caliente!'' In 2006, saxophonist Jimmy Sommers recorded the song for his Standards album ''Time Stands Still''. Contemporary jazz

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

ist

Nils Nils is a Scandinavian given name, a chiefly Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Latvian variant of Niels, cognate to Nicholas. People and animals with the given name * Nils Bergström (born 1985), Swedish ice hockey player *Nils Björk (1898–1989) ...

released a rendition from his 2009 album ''Up Close & Personal''. Blake Aaron covers the song on his 2015 album ''Soul Stories''. Another rendition is the one made by

Tuck Andress Tuck may refer to: People * Tuck (surname), including a list of people * Tuck (nickname), a list of people * Tuck (footballer), Portuguese football player and coach João Carlos Novo de Araújo Gonçalves (born 1969) * Hillary Tuck (born 1978), ...

during the 1990s. Spanish musician

Dyango José Gómez Romero, artistically known as Dyango (born March 5, 1940), nicknamed "The Voice of Love", is a Spanish musician and singer of romantic music. He is widely regarded as one of the most romantic Spanish singers, and one of the best p ...

sang a version accompanied by

Paco de Lucia Paco is a Spanish nickname for Francisco. According to folk etymology, the nickname has its origins in Saint Francis of Assisi, who was the father of the Franciscan order; his name was written in Latin by the order as ''Pater Communitatis'' (fath ...

, with lyrics set to the melody.

Vital Information Steve Smith and Vital Information is an American jazz fusion group led by drummer Steve Smith. The first line-up of Vital Information — Steve Smith (drums), Tim Landers (bass), and Dave Wilczewski (sax) — met in 1971 during their high scho ...

recorded their version on the ''Vitalive!'' album with

Frank Gambale Frank Gambale (; born 22 December 1958) is an Australian jazz fusion guitarist. He has released twenty albums over a period of three decades, and is known for his use of the sweep picking and economy picking techniques. Recording career Solo ...

on guitar.

References

{{authority control 1976 songs Santana (band) songs Songs written by Carlos Santana