Cindy Blackman Santana was born on November 18, 1959, in Yellow Springs, Ohio. By the time she appeared behind the drums in Lenny Kravitz’s 1993 “Are You Gonna Go My Way” video, she had already begun releasing jazz records as a bandleader. Her work with Kravitz brought a different setting for those skills, while her own recordings gave her room to develop as a composer and, eventually, a featured vocalist.
Music was part of her upbringing: her mother and grandmother were classical musicians, and her uncle played vibraphone. After moving to Connecticut, she studied at the Hartt School of Music and later attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. She left Berklee after three semesters to work with the Drifters. In New York during the 1980s, she busked and sought out opportunities to hear experienced jazz drummers play, learning from the musicians around her as she built her own career.
Her compositions appeared on trumpeter Wallace Roney’s 1987 album Verses. A recording contract with Muse followed, and Arcane introduced her as a bandleader. She was establishing a place for her own writing alongside her work in other musicians’ groups, a pattern that continued after rock touring became a substantial part of her working life.
The Kravitz connection began in the early 1990s with a phone conversation during which she played drums for him. He invited her to Los Angeles. Recalling the audition in a 2024 WTOP interview, she said she played second among roughly 40 drummers, and Kravitz stopped the auditions after hearing her. The job led to years of touring and her appearance in the “Are You Gonna Go My Way” video. Kravitz himself played the drums on the studio recording.
Working in his band meant listening closely to where the guitars placed the rhythm. Blackman Santana explained to Guitar Player in 2020 that she had to understand the placement of Kravitz’s riffs and grooves before responding. Sometimes the drummer could push a guitarist; at other moments, the guitar guided the performance. “Each person takes turns at being the glue in the band,” she said. That exchange became an important part of her approach to collaboration.
Her own albums kept her jazz interests in the foreground. On 2010’s Another Lifetime, she revisited the music of drummer Tony Williams alongside original compositions. She had first met Williams as a teenager at a drum clinic near her Connecticut home, and admired his technique, tunings and willingness to change the instrument’s possibilities. The tribute gave her space to explore that influence through arrangements of his repertoire and music of her own.
She first played with Santana in 2010 and joined the band full-time in 2016. The collaboration also opened another outlet for her writing. On Power of Peace, the 2017 album by Santana and the Isley Brothers, she wrote and sang “I Remember.” Alongside her drumming, the song placed her voice and composition inside a project shared with musicians known for their own distinctive singing and instrumental styles.
That vocal work expanded on her 2020 solo album Give the Drummer Some, made with producer Narada Michael Walden. For “Imagine,” she wanted a rock-and-funk arrangement, and Walden suggested Kravitz’s treatment of “American Woman” as a reference for the feel. They retained the lyrics and melody while changing the setting, with Carlos Santana contributing guitar. The record also made space for “Mother Earth,” an unaccompanied drum performance: singing and directing collaborators had joined her work behind the kit, and the album let listeners hear each part of that approach.
