"Europa" is an instrumental

Instrumental

An instrumental is a musical composition or recording without lyrics or singing, although it might include some non-articulate vocal input; the music is primarily or exclusively produced by musical instruments....

 song from the Santana

Santana (band)

Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...

 album Amigos

Amigos

Amigos is the seventh studio album from Santana. The album contained a minor US hit single in "Let It Shine" and was the band's first album to hit the top ten on the Billboard charts since Caravanserai in 1972...

. One of Santana's most popular songs, it is sometimes a common staple on classic rock

Classic rock

Classic rock is a radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format features music ranging generally from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, primarily focusing on the hard rock genre that peaked in popularity in the...

 radio stations and oldies

Oldies

Oldies is a term commonly used to describe a radio format that concentrates on music from a period of about 15 to 55 years before the present day....

 radio stations.

Genesis

Upon seeing his friend was suffering a bad experience whilst high on mescaline

Mescaline

Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....

, Santana composed a song titled "The Mushroom Lady's Coming to Town". This precursor contained the first lick to the song "Europa". It was put away and not touched for some time.

When Santana was touring with Earth, Wind & Fire

Earth, Wind & Fire

Earth, Wind & Fire is an American soul and R&B band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1969 by Verdine and Maurice White. Also known as EWF, the band has won six Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards. They have been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of...

 in Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, England, he played this song again, this time with Tom Coster

Tom Coster

Tom Coster is an American keyboardist and composer. Detroit-born and San Francisco-raised, Coster played piano and accordion as a youth, continuing his studies through college and a productive five-year stint as a musician in the U.S...

 who helped him with some of the chords and thus Europa was born. It was renamed to "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)".

Covers

A famous rendition was by saxophonist

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 Gato Barbieri

Gato Barbieri

Leandro Barbieri , better known as Gato Barbieri , is an Argentinean jazz tenor saxophonist and composer who rose to fame during the free jazz movement in the 1960s and from his latin jazz recordings in the 1970s.-Biography:Born to a family of musicians, Barbieri began playing music...

 off his 1976 from album Caliente!. In 2006, saxophonist Jimmy Sommers covered the song for his Standards album "Time Stands Still." Contemporary jazz

Smooth jazz

Smooth jazz is a genre of music that grew out of jazz fusion and is influenced by R&B, funk, rock, and pop music styles ....

 guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

ist Nils released a rendition from his 2009 album Up Close & Personal.