Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)

"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.

The 16-bar chord progression follows the Circle of Fifths, similar to the jazz standard "Autumn Leaves." Every other verse ends with a Picardy cadence.

Genesis

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)".

The above is disputed however since much of the song, including the guitar intro is nearly identical in notation^[1] to 'Y Volvere', which was written and released five years before Santana's "Europa", and performed by the Chilean group "Los Angeles Negros."

Covers

A famous rendition was by saxophonist Gato Barbieri off his 1976 from album Caliente!.^[2] In 2006, saxophonist Jimmy Sommers covered the song for his Standards album Time Stands Still.^[3][4] Contemporary jazz guitarist Nils released a rendition from his 2009 album Up Close & Personal.^[5][6] Blake Aaron covers the song on his album Soul Stories (2015).

Another famous rendition is the one made by Tuck Andress during the '90s.

Spanish musician Dyango sang a version accompanied by Paco de Lucia, with lyrics set to the melody.

References