North Bay Woman

34 NORTH BAY WOMAN | F A L L 2 0 1 6 Blackman to play a concert because his regular drummer was unavailable. "When my booking agent wanted to know if I wanted to do a concert with Carlos, I said, 'You have to ask? Are you kidding me'? So the guy put me in touch with Carlos and Carlos invited me to Las Vegas to hear the band and get a feel for what's happening. We basically hit it off really well." The two kept in touch after that weekend. They shared soulful conversations about music, spirituality — as Blackman Santana put it, 'Many different things we were both interested in." A couple of weeks later they performed the concert. "We gravitated toward each other's energy. I was really yearning for a spiritual partner in my life because I'd been consciously single at that point for a long time," she explains. "When Carlos and I started talking about spirituality and there he was, I thought, 'Oh my goodness I love this.' It's like a light turned on. I think something similar happened with Carlos in terms of where my spiritual awareness was and is. And we just came together." After only seven months, Carlos Santana proposed to Cindy Blackman in a historical moment in rock music history: onstage in the middle of a concert in Chicago. Blackman had gone out to visit him on tour. Santana invited her on stage to sit in for one song. As she tells it, "I took a drum solo on this song, 'Corazon Espinado.' After my solo, Carlos called me to the front of the stage. He was talking to the audience for a long time. I was thinking, 'What's going on?' He was pausing, looking at me, looking at the audience. Then he said it: 'Cindy, I want to know if you will be my queen, my wife. Will you marry me?' "We were onstage in front of how many people! Thousands. But I only saw one — Carlos. I looked at him and said, 'yes.' The crowd went crazy. It was the most amazing thing that ever happened to me on stage." Since then, Blackman Santana has found that, "Many people tell me they were inspired by the Below, left to right: Cindy Blackman Santana and Carlos Santana wedding in Hawaii – Photo by Jimmy Bruch. Blackman Santana with Zelda Booth Harris, her maternal grandmother who was a classical pianist, church pianist and organist; in New York City with saxophonist George Braith; Blackman Santana in a Gretsch drum ad. – Photos provided by Ghita Blackman Above: Cindy Blackman Santana at the Santana studio in Marin; drumsticks in their carrying case. – Photos by Stuart Lirette

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