Song:Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile)
DVD:PBS Soundstage
Here's a very rare vintage video clip of guitarist Carlos Santana and sax player Gato Barbieri. Santana and his keyboard player Tom Coster wrote Europa for the 1976 album Amigos. Santana had written the song a few years earlier and he never finished it and put it aside. The band was on tour with Earth, Wind & Fire in England when he decided to try the song again. Coster helped Santana with some of the chord changes and it was on Amigos. It's turned out to be one of Santana's more durable instrumentals and he still performs it today. Gato Barbieri was recording his A&M Records debut album Caliente! and he decided to record Europa. I thought Santana may have appeared on the recording uncredited but he doesn't. But as a big jazz fan, Santana was already familiar with Barbieri. So he invited Barbieri to perform Europa on a TV special Santana was taping for the PBS series Soundstage. The taping was Feb. 21, 1977 in Chicago. Tower Of Power also appeared on this show. The band was Santana's band at the time with Tom Coster on keyboards, David Brown on bass, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler on drums and Armando Peraza on percussion. Though Santana and Barbieri would record together years later, this appears to be the only time they performed together. This episode of Soundstage can be viewed in its entirety on Youtube. It's available as a bootleg DVD. Do a Google search and you will find it. I loved Soundstage and PBS should release the whole series in a DVD box set. There's plenty of great music. Here's Santana featuring Gato Barbieri performing Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile) on PBS Soundstage Feb. 21, 1977 in Chicago.
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