Playing drums for rock legends such as Lenny Kravitz and Carlos Santana requires a real beast. Cindy Blackman Santana performs this Friday and Saturday at The Carlyle Room in Northwest Washington, D.C. “We’ve kind of revamped a few works by other people, like Wayne Shorter, so they sound a little different, which is great; we put a new spin on them,” Blackman Santana said to WTOP. “We have quite a few originals.” “This band is amazing; everyone has such large ears, so the music can really take many journeys, twists, and turns, keeping the energy and excitement high while showcasing everyone’s incredible instrument sounds.”
Blackman Santana was born in 1959 in the little Ohio town of Yellow Springs. His early musical influences were funk, jazz, classical music, and rock ‘n roll. She attended the Hartt School of Music in Hartford and the Berklee College of Music in Boston after her family relocated to Connecticut. Eventually, she left school to play with the doo-wop and R&B group The Drifters.
That was great since it gave me some security and a small opportunity to earn some money. and just perform occasionally; even if it wasn’t the song I intended to play, the experience was wonderful,” she remarked. After relocating to New York City, she received a phone call from Lenny Kravitz in 1993 asking her to come to Los Angeles for an audition for his “Are You Gonna Go My Way” music video.
She would go on to serve as his touring drummer for almost twenty years, and she was included in the live performance documentary “Alive from Planet Earth” that was shot in Australia. “I got to know Lenny Kravitz through a mutual friend who told me about him. He’s been looking for a drummer for the past year and a half.” Saying, “Who’s that?” “The guy that was married to Lisa Bonet,” he murmured.
I went down there and tried out; there were maybe forty drummers. I performed second, and Lenny concluded the auditions by saying, “No, I choose Cindy.” It was an incredible run of seventeen years of touring,” she reflected.
She first got to know Carlos Santana, her future husband, in 2005 when performing with Kravitz at a German music festival. Blackman Santana remarked, “I was with Lenny Kravitz and Santana was playing, they played first.” “I had a chance to meet Carlos very briefly, but there was no spark or anything like that; I was already romantically involved, and I think he was too. Five years later, he was attempting to determine which drummer to get to fill in. Carlos and I had a natural musical connection, and as we got to chatting, we had a genuine spiritual connection as well.
On July 9, 2010, while she was attending a concert in Chicago, he made a grand proposal on stage. “I was playing ‘Corazón Espinado’ and I took a drum solo,” Blackman Santana said. “He called me up to the front of the stage and he starts talking.
It seemed like forever, then he just looked at me and it was like a golden silence, it wasn’t a dead-zone silence, it was really golden because of the way he was looking at me. We’re in front of 20 to 30,000 people, then he just said it, ‘Cindy, will you marry me?’ I was pretty floored
‘Yes, absolutely.’”
The husband and wife artists are still going strong after 14 years together.
“Doing what you love best with the person you love is really great,” she remarked. We have something so wonderful to share. I consider music to be the ultimate form of communication, equal to prayer, as it has the ability to transcend all barriers, be they political, cultural, racial, or otherwise. I therefore adore music, and being able to share it with Carlos is just the best experience imaginable. It’s the ultimate joy ride. For more trending news click
