LOS ANGELES — For guitarist Carlos Santana, who won eight Grammys
in February, coming backstage holding the statuettes is becoming a habit. He entered the press room nonchalantly, held a Latin Grammy in each hand and said, "This one gives me hope to make Spanish and English
mandatory in California, Arizona, Texas, Nuevo Mexico and Miami and this one is to invite Mr. Nelson Mandela and Rev. Desmond Tutu next year because the music that all Latin people play is African music and we’d
like to invite the aborigines and the American Indians to also participate in this event. That’s what this represents to me. It’s an invitation to the rest of the human race to participate in this.”
Then someone in the room cries “Viva Tijuana!” (Long Live Tijuana), Santana's Mexican hometown. “Orale!” responded the guitarist.
When asked about his role in bringing Latin music to the
mainstream, Santana took the opportunity to acknowledge some of the pioneers, musicians such as rocker Ritchie Valens, singer Jose Feliciano, percussionists Mongo Santamaria and Ray Barretto and pianist Eddie Palmieri.
“But it’s just what happened. When Santana came up we merged different colors and rhythms and somehow we took it all the way to Jerusalem and Japan.”
A few minutes into his conference, the members of Maná
walked on stage
“We got lost,” said drummer Alex Gonzalez sheepishly.
“Today is a historic day for Latin music,” said Gonzalez, speaking in Spanish. “There have been many [comments],
some positive, some bad. But today is a day to learn and keep doing the good things, and the things that did not work out that well improve them in the next awards. The
important thing is to support Latin music so it can earn more respect and a greater reach.”
LOS ANGELES — For guitarist Carlos Santana, who won eight Grammys
in February, coming backstage holding the statuettes is becoming a habit.