Reveling in Guitars’ Resurgence : Music: Rock musician Carlos Santana is pleased with the new popularity of the guitar, after dominance by synthesizer.

One of the hottest songs on rock radio right now is the Jeff Healey Band’s remake of the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

It’s symbolic of the electric guitar’s recent resurgence, after a long struggle with the synthesizer, as the dominant instrument in rock ‘n’ roll.

There’s a whole new breed of guitar heroes--such as Steve Vai and Joe Satriani--and a rash of guitar-driven rock groups led by Guns ‘n’ Roses.

Carlos Santana, the highly acclaimed guitarist of the rock era who will be appearing with the band that carries his name at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park Thurday night, is heartened by the rock world’s renewed infatuation with the guitar. He never doubted it would happen, he said, it was only a matter of time.

“The guitar is like a voice that refused to go away,” Santana said by phone from his San Francisco home. “At one point, even Jan Hammer (who has recorded albums with such respected guitarists as John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, and Al Di Meola) said the end of the guitar was near and the synthesizer was going to replace it.

“And I said to him, ‘If that’s the case, then why are you trying to sound like the guitar so bad through the synthesizer?’ ”

In a career that spans more than two decades, Santana has steadfastly clung to his belief in the staying power of the guitar--and practiced what he has preached.

Since 1968, he’s been the leader, and sole mainstay, of the band Santana, whose fusion of rock, jazz, and Afro-Latin rhythms centers on his intricate, innovative finger-picking.

Santana has also applied his formidable guitar talents to joint studio projects with Buddy Miles and John McLaughlin--and on solo albums featuring such noted guest musicians as jazzmen Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter; country “outlaw” Willie Nelson, and blues band the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

“Ever since T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian, the guitar has been a voice rather than an accompanying instrument,” Santana said. “Thanks to them, it stopped being like a stool for someone to sit down on, caught behind the singer and the soloist.

“It became a voice that tells stories in a language that’s beyond English or German or French, a very universal language in the hands of somebody who can have his immediate stamp on the listener.”

It is the latest of many incarnations of Santana, the band, that will appear here Thursday. And for Santana, the guitarist, the concert will be something of a homecoming. Although he was born in Autlan de Navarro, a tiny town in the Mexican state of Jalisco, he was raised in Tijuana.

It was there, between 1955 and 1962, that Santana honed his now-famous chops, initially on the violin and, later, on the guitar.

“I started out, just like most kids, in the streets, playing straight-ahead Mexican folk songs for tourists,” Santana, now 43, recalled. “It was me on the violin and two guitarists, and the first words we learned in English to say were, ‘A song, mister? Fifty cents a song.’ ”

By 1959, Santana had switched to the guitar and was performing every weekend in nightclubs like the long-gone Convoy Club on Avenida Revolucion, “which is now the parking lot for Woolworths.”

“I was in several different bands, mostly trios--guitar, bass and drums--and sometimes piano, if they had one,” Santana recalled. “One was called the T.J.’s, but the rest of the time we didn’t have no name--we were just the club band.

“We played the American Top 40, and at the time Top 40, for us, was ‘Green Onions’ and ‘Night Train’ and Freddy King’s ‘Hide Away’--we didn’t have ‘Gloria’ or ‘Satisfaction’ yet.

“So we played those songs, and then black Americans would come down to Tijuana on Friday night and stay all the way up to Sunday morning, and they’d . . . teach us how to play the blues.

“That’s when we really started jamming, from midnight to 6 in the morning, doing songs like ‘You Can Make It If You Try’--just this incredible repertoire of songs we learned to play.

“It wasn’t just rock or blues--in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was real integrated.”

In 1962, Santana moved to San Francisco, rejoining his family, which had made the move two years earlier. The times, they were a-changin’, and so was Santana.

“I watched the Kennedys and Martin Luther King get shot and learned about the Black Panthers and the hippie movement and the consciousness revolution. All that stuff that to this day is the most exciting part of my life,” Santana said.

“I began to realize that America needed to wake up to the real philosophy of the Constitution, as opposed to the John Wayne philosophy, and that I could help bring that about through my music.”

The Santana Blues Band evolved in San Francisco’s Latin district from jam sessions between Santana and musicians. The band’s official debut was in 1968, at the Fillmore West. Their popularity surged, and a year later, after a show-stopping performance at Woodstock, they were signed by Columbia Records.

The group’s debut album, “Santana,” was released in the fall of 1969. The LP peaked at No. 4 on the national album charts and yielded the Top 40 hit, “Evil Ways.”

Santana’s 1970 follow-up, “Abraxas,” went all the way to No. 1 and yielded a second Top 40 hit, “Black Magic Woman.”

Since then, the group has released 17 more albums--12 of which went either gold or platinum--and scored nearly a dozen Top 40 hits, including the Spanish-language “Oye Como Va” in 1971 and a cover of the Zombies’ “She’s Not There” in 1977.

The band has also weathered myriad personnel changes, in which such heavy hitters as guitarist Neal Schon, keyboardist Gregg Rolie, and drummer Michael Shrieve came and went. (Schon and Rolie would later form Journey).

Commercially, Santana isn’t doing nearly as well as it used to. The band hasn’t had a gold album since 1981’s “Zebop!” or a Top 40 single since 1982’s “Hold On.” And the band’s latest album, “Spirits Dancing in the Flesh,” released July 3, has barely made a dent on the charts.

Carlos Santana, however, insists that doesn’t bother him in the least. He’s mighty pleased with the album, and that’s really all that matters, he said.

“If you see that movie, ‘Ghosts,’ and see the kid, at the end of the movie, walking into the light, that’s where my album begins,” Santana said. “That’s the thing that I want to make a bridge between, the spiritual and the physical, and I think we got really close, where we accentuate that if you live this life, there is a garden where nothing dies or grows old.”