Gustavo’s music blends culture and experience

The great Argentine musician Gustavo Santaolalla’s evolutionary journey in sound and music continues to be an inspiration to everyone in the world. He managed to pave music as a universal language distilled by culture, personal experiences and a flair for minimalist productions.

Much of his works explore simple melodies that encourage a provocation of thoughts, and emotions. In Gustavo’s own words in an NPR podcast, ‘It is Latin music because it’s made by a Latino. But it is music. Universal music created by somebody that happens to be a Latino.’ He emphasizes that explorations of folk music and cultural studies are key ingredients in uniting listeners through a pure sense of societal belonging rather than an imposition of intelligence or cleverness. A selfless and humble approach to music is evident in his works.

Atahualpa Yupanqui, an Argentine folk musician of the 20th century, was one of his major influences that coaxed him to revisit his Latino heritage. Deeply influenced by tango and milonga as a sophisticated and popular musical form, Gustavo’s breakthrough album ‘Ronroco’ (1998) paved a new form of independent world music movement.

It was a courageous album that explored the depth and dynamics of the Ronroco, a 10 stringed mandolin-like instrument having its origins in the Andean regions of South America. The album combines traditional, modern and ethnic melodies along with contemporary techniques of fingerpicking, slapping, strumming and intricate tremolos.

Deeply influenced by the timbre of this instrument, we often see Gustavo experimenting with its sound. In tracks like ‘Way out’ and ‘Atacama’, he overlays multiple plucking patterns of the ronroco, resulting in a highly spatial environment, giving us an overwhelming feel of a heavy rainfall of notes.

The spiritual feel of his compositions are entwined with his ability to control the dynamics of the voice of his instrument with the most accurate fingerpicking movements. The tracks ‘Coyita’, ‘Jardin’ and ‘Pampa’ give the feeling of a soft waltz often slowing down in movement but culminating into a crucial climactic line while picking up pace.

The structure of his compositions are unrestrained and often emerge as a poetic interplay between the melody, silence and rhythm. The track ‘Lela’ starts with an unusual line but ends up in a crescendo of flamenco strumming patterns, signifying his love for tango. There is no sense of rushing or calculation in his style. ‘De Ushuaia a la Quiaca’ and ‘Iguazu’ are the standout tracks in this album and have made their way into the soundtracks of some of the most major world films in the world.

Instrumental music can form the foundational bed for creating the gravitas required for complex written narratives. In Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s ‘Babel’ (2006), ‘Iguazu’ plays during a purging climax scene taking place in three different environments simultaneously. The track plays over an intricately edited scene without any diegetic sound. The presence of only music on these scenes is an intentional decision. They uplift the aural experience of the film so that sound becomes a primary source of engagement, giving us the opportunity to look for hidden emotional experiences.

The helicopter rescue scene remains to this day one of the best executed scenes of all time due to its editing, music choice and the intangible nature of its audio-visual synthesis. In Ang Lee’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’, Gustavo adorned the lush green snow-capped mountainous landscape of Wyoming with a steel string based acoustic guitar score.

The film, based on Annie Proulx’s short fiction story of the same name, is about two hardworking cowboys, who fall in love with each other. Gustavo’s score becomes a motif for their memory of love and when we hear the country-ish guitar progression, the landscape appears before our eyes along with the dormant emotions that lie beneath the surface.

As a young punk rock musician in his teens, he explored different genres of music and soon sought to produce other popular Latin rock bands. He continues to find new mediums to adorn with his music.

He has worked on musical theatre productions and also performs actively with different ensembles. Through his work, he propagates the philosophy that music is a unique concoction of one’s journey with culture, people and situations in the world.

(The author is a Bengaluru based journalist and music composer, with an expertise in philosophy of sound)