Art & Creativity Quote by Carlos Santana

Santana isn’t making a musicological trivia point; he’s calling out a branding trick. “Latin” and “Spanish” are market labels that often sanitize the messy, Black-rooted history of the Americas into something safer for radio, tourism, and national pride. By bluntly saying “really African,” he yanks the spotlight away from the romance of Spain and the gloss of “Latinness” and plants it where the beat actually comes from: the African diaspora’s rhythms, instruments, and communal traditions that survived slavery and colonial rule by evolving in plain sight.

The intent is corrective and moral. “Black people need to get the credit” is less about medals than about power: who gets remembered, who gets paid, whose culture becomes “heritage” for others to export. In a business that routinely rewards the frontman and forgets the lineage, Santana uses his own credibility - a Mexican-American guitarist who built his career on Afro-Cuban percussion and blues - to say the quiet part out loud. He’s also refusing the convenient story that “Latin music” is a monolith tied to language. Spanish, here, is treated as a costume draped over African rhythmic logic.

The subtext carries a challenge to listeners and institutions: if you enjoy salsa, samba, son, reggaeton, even the swing inside Latin rock, you’re already participating in Black innovation. Give credit isn’t just an applause line; it’s a demand for accurate history, better attribution, and a more honest accounting of how culture travels - and who gets erased along the way.