Gustavo Santaolalla

Gustavo Santaolalla
Santaolalla in 2022
Background information
Birth name	Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla
Also known as	Moviola
Born	(1951-08-19) 19 August 1951 (age 73) El Palomar, Argentina
Origin	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Genres	Latin rock tango film score
Occupations	Composer music producer musician
Instruments	Vocals guitar banjo ronroco
Years active	1967–present
Member of	Bajofondo
Formerly of	Arco Iris

Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla (Spanish: [ɡusˈtaβo alˈfɾeðo santaoˈlaʝa]; born 19 August 1951) is an Argentine composer, record producer and musician. Known for his minimalist approach to composing, he has received numerous accolades for his works and is known for his influence in several Latin rock music genres.

Involved in music from a young age, he began a professional career in 1967 founding the band Arco Iris, an influential band to the genre rock nacional. Fleeing the rule of the Argentine military junta and the dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process, Santaolalla moved to Los Angeles in the United States in 1978. After returning to Argentina in the 1980s and taking a musical sabbatical, he became a leading figure in the rock en español movement, and established the neotango group Bajofondo in 2001. Music from his 1998 solo album Ronroco caught the attention of filmmakers and led to a career expansion into film scores, beginning with Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), and The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).

Santaolalla rose to fame for creating the scores for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Babel (2006), for which he received two Academy Awards for Best Original Score in consecutive years. Santaolalla further gained recognition for his work on The Last of Us game series, composing the 2013 title and its 2020 sequel. He composed his first animated film, The Book of Life (2014). Santaolalla returned to reprise his themes and co-compose the score for the 2023 television adaptation of The Last of Us.

Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla was born in El Palomar, Argentina on 19 August 1951.^[1] Santaolalla was born to a stay-at-home mother and a father working in the advertising industry for J. Walter Thompson.^[2] His family has roots in Spain; his grandfather was Andalusian and his grandmother was Basque.^[3] When Santaolalla was five, he was given his first guitar by his grandmother for his birthday;^[2] he "immediately connected in a sort of a spiritual level with the music",^[4] and began musical tutelage with a hired teacher.^[2] When he was ten, his teacher declined to continue attempting to educate him; according to Santaolalla, the teacher told his mother "his ear is stronger than my music".^[4]

In his pre-teenage years, Santaolalla wrote songs in English which "mimick[ed]" the music of bands like the Beatles;^[4] at twelve, he was gifted his first electric guitar.^[2] In his teenage years, Santaolalla had aspired to become a musician such that he designed a logo for a record label he had dreamed of owning.^[5] By 1966, Santaolalla—just 15—had been arrested by the military juntas governing Argentina,^[2] according to him because he had long hair and played an electric guitar, despite not partaking in drugs or being involved in political activities.^[4] The first of these times, his father arrived to collect him, questioning the authorities about what crime Gustavo had committed.^[2] The arrests continued throughout his adolescence.^[2]

Santaolalla's music career began in 1967 when he co-founded the group Arco Iris,^[5] a rock band that helped create rock nacional, a genre that blends Argentine folk music and Latin American rhythms.^[4] He played guitar and sang in the band, which included wind instrument playe Ara Tokatlian, bass player Guillermo Bordarampé, percussionist Horacio Gianello, and their vocalist Danais Winnycka, who became their spiritual guide.^[6] The group lived a communal lifestyle, practicing celibacy, vegetarianism and were engaged with Eastern religions.^[2] The band rose to prominence with the song "Mañana campestre" from their third album Tiempo de Resurrección.^[6] After seven albums, Santaolalla left following a disagreement with Tokatlian,^[6] and amid concerns that arose with Santaolalla halfway through their existence that "any group that is so inner directed runs the risk of turning into a cult".^[2] Santaolalla thereafter founded the hard rock group Soluna.^[2][6] With the 1976 Argentine coup d'état, Santaolalla experienced hard times under the National Reorganization Process, and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1978, living undocumented for several years.^[4] He formed the group Wet Picnic, but had no commercial success with them.^[5]

In the mid 1980s, Santaolalla was able to return to Argentina, and on one trip, he began travelling the rural country with his friend, the folk musician León Gieco.^[4] This venture was called "De Ushuaia a la Quiaca", respectively referring to the southernmost and northernmost towns in Argentina, Ushuaia and La Quiaca.^[5] In four years, he and Gieco travelled from northern Argentina to Tierra del Fuego, near Antarctica; his embrace of intrinsic styles of music caused them to become prevalent in his work, namely the ten-string Andean instrument called the ronroco.^[4] Santaolalla became a leading figure of the Mexico-based rock en español movement around this time;^[5] The Los Angeles Times described his contribution to Latin rock music as becoming "the most transcendent producer" in its history.^[7] Santaolalla collaborated with co-producer Aníbal Kerpel on albums for numerous artists, including Café Tacvba, Maldita Vecindad, Julieta Venegas, Molotov, and Juanes;^[7] Santaolalla said he produced over 100 records at that point in time.^[5][8] In 1998, he released the album Ronroco, consisting of solo works recorded over 14 years,^[5] and featuring the titular instrument alongside the charango and the Andean pan flute.^[4] Santolalla formed the neotango group Bajofondo in 2001, for whom he plays guitar.^[5]

The attention that Santaolalla's record Ronroco attained led to a career expansion into composing film scores.^[7] American director Michael Mann first used Santaolalla's song "Iguazu" in his film The Insider (1999).^[5] Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu heard Ronroco, leading him to ask Santaolalla to compose his films Amores perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003),^[5] creating a recurring collaboration between the two.^[9] Of this transition into scores, Santaolalla said he had "no plan, no master plan. But I always had this love for films".^[4] He also scored Walter Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).^[5]

Santaolalla provided the instrumental music for the soundtrack to the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain.^[5] Director Ang Lee sought a sparse and "yearning" sound for the film, and sent Santaolalla a script. Two weeks later, he received a CD of new compositions for the film—unaware that Santaolalla composed music during early pre-production for films, he mistook this for reference music.^[5] According to Santaolalla, he composed 100% of the score before principal photography began.^[8] From Brokeback Mountain, Santaolalla composed "A Love That Will Never Grow Old", which won the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.^[10] Santaolalla composed the score to the 2006 film Babel, another collaboration with Iñárritu.^[9]

Santaolalla's reception of the Academy Awards for Best Original Score for Brokeback Mountain in 2006 and for Babel in 2007 established him as a prominent composer of Hollywood films.^[11] He was the co-producer of Calle 13's song "Tango del Pecado", a song from their album Residente o Visitante (2007).^[12] On 12 June, 2008, Santaolalla was recognized as a BMI Icon during the 15th annual Latin Awards Ceremony.^[13]

Santaolalla composed the score of the 2013 video game The Last of Us. During the initial development of the game, creative director Neil Druckmann and game director Bruce Straley compiled musical tracks that they found inspirational. When searching for a composer to work on the game's music, they realised that Santaolalla composed many of their compiled tracks; they asked "that sound guy" from Sony to reach out to the musician.^[14] He was brought to the studio and was shown an early version of the game's first trailer and a full description of the game's plot; Druckmann remembers the composer's first words to them were "I want to be a part of this. Whatever it takes, I want to write for this".^[15] Santaolalla had previously wanted to compose for video games and was approached by several other developers following his wins for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards, but he refused to work on projects without a focus on story and characters.^[11] Santaolalla remembered that he sent Druckmann "batches of themes and music" for nearly three years;^[16] to challenge himself, Santaolalla used a variety of unique instruments that were new to him, giving "an element of danger and innocence".^[17] In November 2013, Santaolalla toured in Mexico with Bajofondo in support of the album Presente, at the 11th Festival de las Almas [es] in Valle de Bravo, at El Plaza Condesa [es], and 19th Festival de Calaveras [es] in Aguascalientes.^[18]

Santaolalla composed the music to the musical Arrabal, written by John Weidman and directed by Sergio Trujillo, which opened at the Panasonic Theatre in February 2014.^[2] He composed the score to the 2014 film The Book of Life—his first animated film and the first time he worked with a large orchestra and choir.^[19] Santaolalla used the marimba, accordion, with mariachi horns in the score, which he saw as a change from his usual minimalist style.^[19] Santaolalla wrote songs with Paul Williams for the film; the two were already working on a musical adaptation of film director Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006).^[20] Stars Diego Luna and Zoe Saldaña sang on the soundtrack, with their Hispanic accents retained—Santaolalla said that this, the authentic instrumentation, and the film's open depiction of life, death, and the underworld made this film "fantastic" and differentiated it from being watered down and tethered to Hollywood appeal.^[21] In 2015, Santaolalla was inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame by Williams, who serves as the president of ASCAP.^[22][23]

Santaolalla returned to compose the score for The Last of Us Part II (2020), as he had done for the first game.^[24] Naughty Dog tasked him to create emotional, character-based tracks, and he worked on the game for two to three years.^[25] Santaolalla continued using the ronroco, his signature instrument used in the first game's theme, as he felt it enhanced main character Ellie's qualities through feminine sounds,^[26] while he introduced a banjo for Abby's theme. He composed Part II's score around the banjo and an electric guitar, feeling the increased characters and complexities demanded more timbre.^[11] Santaolalla worked with Gary Clark Jr. on the song "Valley of Last Resort", written for the documentary film Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb (2020). With lyrics written by Paul Williams, Clark and Santaolalla respectively play electric guitar and ronroco, and perform vocals together.^[27]

Santaolalla returned to co-compose the score for the television adaptation of The Last of Us, which premiered in 2023.^[28] He felt the "relationship that [fans] have with the music of the game" made his return inevitable and noted the music was so integral to the narrative that its absence would be akin to excluding lead characters Joel or Ellie.^[16] Santaolalla primarily recrafted his previous work instead of creating new music, focusing on elements he found interesting.^[29] He said some of his pieces fit perfectly while others were trimmed and edited to fit the scenes.^[16] He treated the series as "an expansion" of the game and kept them tied to each other, not seeking to revise or correct previous work as he found it authentic.^[30] Santaolalla had around 185 cues for the series,^[30] associated with specific on-screen actions, like a character opening a door or getting in a car.^[16] Santaolalla worked on the score with David Fleming, who selected specific instruments to compose with that paired appropriately with Santaolalla's work.^[31]

In 2024, Santaolalla composed an original score for the October 25–27 screenings of the 1931 Spanish-language Dracula film at the United Theater in Los Angeles, commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera.^[32] Santaolalla was interested in combining the traditional scoring method with an experimental musical approach—he knew nothing of this Spanish-language adaptation beforehand, and said that its lack of music made it languid—he felt his score's contribution to the showing would complement the characterization in the film.^[7] Having an orchestra conducted by the Opera's resident conductor Lina González-Granados, Santaolalla composed the music beyond the orchestral portion with synthesisers and samplers, which he said improved the subharmonics and gave the score "potency". Santaolalla said that he maintained a feeling of "innocence" with the project, not feeling intimidated by the task in order to have fun, as the score would retain the "same melancholy touch that is ever present in everything I do".^[7]

Santaolalla does not know how to read or write musical notation.^[4] When he played music in his adolescence, Santaolalla would have to make sure he memorised all of the pieces he created and practised them so he would not forget, as he did not write them down in notation; in his teenage years, his parents bought him a tape recorder, and he began using this to collect his pieces. When working with an orchestra, Santaolalla still uses this method to notate, recording his compositions so an orchestrator can translate them to paper.^[8]

Santaolalla typically begins composing music early in the production process of a film, according to the screenplay, something he says affords him a greater creative role in a film.^[9] Santaolalla says this means he composes based on his relationship with the story and characters, and from conversations with the principal creatives of the production, and he adapts his work from there.^[8]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gustavo Santaolalla.

• Gustavo Santaolalla at AllMusic
• Gustavo Santaolalla at IMDb
• Interviews at NPR
• I've Always Been Obsessed By Identity: An Interview With Gustavo Santoalalla Archived 1 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine