Venue: Hammersmith Odeon
Date: December 15 1976
Band Line-up:
Devadip Carlos Santana - Guitars/Vocals
Graham Lear - Drums
José "Chepito" Areas - Cymbals
Raul Rekow - Congas
Tom Coster - Keyboards
Pablo Telez - Bass
Luther Rabb - Vocals
"Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)" is an instrumental from the Santana album Amigos, written by Carlos Santana and Tom Coster. It is one of Santana's most popular compositions and it reached the top in the Spanish Singles Chart in July 1976.
Upon seeing a friend suffering a bad experience whilst high on mescaline, 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 in Manchester, 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)".
Europa is considered by many to be Santana's most beautiful instrumental song and is one of his most harmonically complex songs—and certainly the most sophisticated, harmonically, of his hits. Based in C minor, Europa has a slick chord progression that utilizes a descending cycle of suspensions and complements perfectly Santana's accessible melody.
