The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (53 page)

Bill used to describe himself as “a sentimental slob.” I’m not that way. I learned that even if you have a sentimental attachment
to some people, in this business it’s sometimes better not to have too many emotional ties. Then if you need to dismiss someone who isn’t helping things along or who can’t keep up while you’re moving forward, it’s okay. I know there are a lot of people who I have carried and kept with me when I should have let them go because they weren’t bringing in any vitality or adding anything to the energy or vision of the organization. It’s never easy—but in 1995, when I finally started my own management company, it was time to start looking at things that way.

We had started to handle all Santana management in ’88, and for a while Bill Graham had been like an overseer, with Ray Etzler as manager. We were still sharing office space with BGP. Then Bill died, Ray left, and Barry Siegel, who was our accountant, came in as business manager and worked with Deborah. She and I—and later my sister-in-law, Kitsaun—all became part of our own management company and learned a collective lesson about being more hands-on with the business, talking with lawyers and accountants, signing our own checks. Deborah was always in and out of the office, questioning whether things could be done better or cheaper. Her years running the restaurant with Kitsaun helped.

Kitsaun King was already a very important part of our family. She was working for United Airlines when we started Santana Management. During the ’90s she eventually became a full-time part of our musical family. She could be tough—over the years we butted heads about some band issues—but her instincts were usually right, and I never doubted her loyalty or her absolute determination to do what was best for Santana. I offer my condolences to anyone who was foolish enough to attempt to put me down or say anything bad about Santana in her presence. Auntie Kitsaun did not tolerate that.

In ’95 we found some office and warehouse space in San Rafael. Before that we were all over the place—renting storage space and rehearsal rooms when we needed them. So we came up with the idea of bringing everything all together under one roof. Deborah was the one who had the vision and intention to make that happen,
and soon we had set up our own company. We got some of our favorite people from BGP—such as Rita Gentry and Marcia Sult Godinez, both very capable and easy to work with—because we wanted some familiar faces. I will be the first to say that working for me is no picnic. In fact I don’t need anybody to work for me—I do my own work, thank you. But if you say we’re working together toward a common goal, and that this is my role and this is your role, then yes, you should be working for me.

The funny thing is that even though we were taking better care of our business, I think that during those first years of having our own management company Santana was quieter in the studio than we had ever been in our history. We went almost seven years with no new Santana recordings, from ’93, when we recorded the concerts in Mexico and South America for the
Sacred Fire
project, to ’99, when I started to work on the songs for
Supernatural
. It wasn’t that there was a creative or musical problem. I never doubt myself with that kind of thing—I don’t get writer’s block. I know the music will come through me. It just felt like there was no need. I didn’t feel like recording. And we didn’t stop playing live—our touring schedule was busy.

I’d rather do nothing than make an album just to keep a music company happy. Also, Davitt Sigerson was gone from Polydor, so they moved us over to Island Records, where Chris Blackwell was in charge. Part of the new deal was that I got my own label, which I called Guts and Grace. There were four albums that came out on it—two by Paolo Rustichelli, one called
Santana Brothers
—that was Jorge and I and our nephew Carlos Hernandez, who plays guitar and is a solid songwriter—and one called
Sacred Sources: Live Forever
. That album compiled live recordings by Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Coltrane, all message givers. It was a challenge to get all the parties to agree—all the estates and their lawyers—but it was worth it to release a lot of the rare music in my collection that maybe would never have gotten out otherwise.

Guts and Grace isn’t around anymore, but the good thing that
came out of it is that I learned for myself that anybody can have a record label, but if you can’t get the music into stores or on the Internet and accessible to the public it’s like having a car without tires or gasoline. You need to have serious juice backing you up at the company you’re part of. Today, of course, it’s all different, with online sites and MP3s, but back then we didn’t know that the whole system of music stores and physical formats was going to change.

I felt bad because I didn’t have enough juice on my own to push Island to take care of my releases. It seemed like Chris Blackwell wasn’t all that hands-on by that time. In my eyes, Island had done some great things by bringing out Bob Marley and reggae music and all that African music on Mango Records, but by the end of the ’90s I think Chris would agree that nobody at Island was really present.

Managing your own career is not easy at the start—there’s a lot of stuff we didn’t know. We met with lawyers and accountants and other businesspeople to find out how we could get more money from old recordings and the group’s images and album covers and the name Santana. We started to study how other bands handled their business—Dave Matthews, the Grateful Dead, and Metallica helped us and showed us what they did. We started to ask the same questions other bands did—how can we use our money to help people directly instead of paying taxes that only end up supporting the Pentagon? We learned that everything in life is a process of learning.

In 1998 through Santana Management we set up the Milagro Foundation to help empower children and teenagers in crisis. That’s still the mission of the foundation. At the start, Deborah and Kitsaun helped manage it. Then we found Shelley Brown, who had been principal at Salvador’s elementary school in San Rafael. Her experience dealing with a public school, making it work for a rainbow of children, and basically holding them all together—black, white, Asian, and Latino—made us think she was the right person.
She’s been amazing. Now it’s Shelley, Ruthie Moutafian, my sister Maria, and a full staff taking care of it. Since the foundation began, we’ve given away almost six million dollars to support youth in all parts of the world.

Why the name Milagro? Because I think life is about making miracles happen—that no matter how much money we give, the most valuable gift we can offer young people is to help them go outside the norms of belief, empowering them to believe that their dreams are not impossible and that they can allow the voice of divinity to take over their lives. If we can teach people to shoot three-pointers in basketball and how to have a healthful diet, we can also teach children in crisis to be happy for just fifteen minutes a day—then an hour, then the whole day—and that’s a miracle. If we can get people to stop criticizing each other—and themselves—and see the bright side of life, that’s a miracle. The foundation is about raising consciousness and awakening divinity at an early, vulnerable age.

It’s really the same message I tell audiences—you can make every day the best day of your life, starting with today. I think that’s the greatest miracle you can give yourself, and it’s not up to anybody but you. You can make it happen, starting right now.

Milagro started close to home, giving money to an organization that helps runaways who come through Larkin Street in San Francisco—where the bus station is. This organization gets to the kids before the drugs and pimps do, giving them a place to sleep and wash and get themselves together so they can figure out their next steps. We also support a community center in Marin City, where the staff teaches children how to grow plants—and we started sponsoring young musicians.

Another thing the foundation does is encourage programs that get kids away from inner cities even if just for a day—out into nature, to see trees and breathe fresh air. We’ve helped get young people out of Oakland and up to the redwoods, where the trees are like huge cathedrals that hide you from the rest of the world and look like they’ve been there so long you can’t measure them with
time. Can you imagine how that looks to a child who’s never seen anything but streets and buildings and concrete? We’re not just raising consciousness—this is more like rearranging it.

Milagro is in Mexico now, too. In border towns such as Tijuana and Juarez, there are a lot of kids who are in crisis, surviving on the streets, and living in tunnels at night. They’re hungry, so they snort a lot of glue to take their mind off the hunger. We are trying to connect with them to save them from that kind of existence. In Autlán there’s now a health clinic and community center called Santuario de Luz—Sanctuary of Light—that Milagro helped found in 2005 with Dr. Martin Sandoval Gomez, and it’s really had an incredible impact on the town. The clinic provides ambulance service and modern facilities that Autlán has never had before. I visited in 2006, and they honored me. People came from various towns around Jalisco to meet me and tell me how their lives were affected by what we were doing with Dr. Martin. Hearing that felt better than receiving any number of Grammy Awards.

I think it’s important to understand that the Milagro Foundation started before we released
Supernatural
—it wasn’t something that came from asking ourselves, “What can we do with all this money?” It started from, “How can we share what we have?” It really goes back long before Milagro, to my mom and her powerful energy of sharing. She would tell us kids, “Everything tastes better when you share it.” And then she’d put ice cream or tacos or frijoles in front of us. Milagro is about providing food for the soul and the spirit, and just like real food, it tastes better when you share it with those who are in need.

Remember the charitable couple from Saint Louis—David and Thelma Steward—who said something that blew my mind: “It’s a blessing to be a blessing”? That’s right. It’s a blessing to be blessed with the resources and the Rolodex to help lots of people and make it work. It’s a community of giving that I became a part of, and I can’t be fooled by my own ego saying, “Look how special I am and what I’m doing.” I have to be open to meeting and supporting other people doing the same work.

Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf started a school in Las Vegas in the middle of the ghetto, and it has almost a 100 percent graduation rate. Some casino owners give money to the school, and there is a benefit concert every year that supports it—I’ve performed at the concert, as have Tony Bennett and Elton John. There should be schools like that in every city: if there were, I know you’d be able to see the benefits for the people living around them in just a few years. There’s a saying I’d like to see again and again—here it comes: Consciousness can be profitable.

I’m high knowing that there is a confederation of hope—Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Bono, Elton John, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and many others. They are all in line together doing what they really believe in. If only we had the opportunity to bring it all together and implement programs and schools and facilities that can help instill the mechanics of equality, fairness, and justice.

I’m also high that sometimes my phone rings and it’s Harry Belafonte. I don’t think anyone today has the same spiritual clarity and moral compass that he does—definitely no one has had it as long as he has. He was working against apartheid before Nelson Mandela went to prison, and then he fought to get Mandela released until it finally happened. He is a pillar of our community, a person upon whom people psychologically and morally depend to be present 100 percent and to not be any less than his light.

The first time we spoke I called him Mr. Belafonte, and he told me not to look up to him that way. “You’re one of us—we stand equal.” I told him I thought I was still getting there, but I could have melted right then when he said that. We talk a lot, and I think part of the reason we got close so fast is because we both carry a flame for freedom and stand up strong in our words and beliefs. The people who produced the Kennedy Center Honors event were thinking of asking Harry to introduce me at the ceremony in 2013, and I spoke with him about it. Harry said, “First I want you to look at a speech on YouTube.” It was the one he gave at the NAACP
dinner honoring Jamie Foxx and others, and he spoke up about gun control and racism: “The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children.”

It was true what Harry said, and I was honored that he agreed to introduce me in the end. My friend Hal Miller gave me advice: he said that I was going to Washington to be honored by the nation and that this was not the time or place to go to war. “Enjoy and savor the experience,” he said. He suggested that I ask Harry to tone it down a bit, too. I told Harry, “Let’s take off the war paint.” Harry said, “All right—but not all of it.”

You can watch Harry’s introduction at the Kennedy Center Honors online—including what he said about me and controlling Mexican immigration. He decided to go for the laughs, but he still got his message across. I love his spirit and what he did that night. I’m very proud to call him a friend, and we’ve done a lot of work together, especially in supporting South Africa.

I think sharing and supporting are always about equality and justice. They are blessings—not something to be sold or kept away from people. If that’s being political, that’s okay. Mr. Belafonte—I mean, Harry—can’t be the only one speaking out.

I was once working with the actor Morgan Freeman against an anti-immigration law in Atlanta, and he said most people don’t understand that when politicians pass laws like that, they prevent people from contributing to the community and making it better for everybody. He was right—for society to grow, it must change. Growth means change, and it should be the same for everybody.