Gustavo Santaolalla runs his hand over his very long, bushy white beard. He then shows that his hair has grown a lot too. Two thin and also long braids, one on each side of his head, attest to this.
“I like to change; I’ve been bald, with long hair, with a ‘goatie’, everything,” said the Argentine musician and composer in a recent Zoom conversation. “This is from the pandemic.”
The talk begins with the emotion of a child who has just been given a toy. He tells that he was a few days ago in his native country, where he participated at a concert by Divididos, a rock band that he produced and that celebrated its 35th anniversary. Gustavo was the special guest, and he performed in front of 45,000 people who gathered in a soccer stadium.
“It was very nice,” he said from his home in Los Angeles, where he has lived for several decades.
Now he is concentrating on at least a dozen projects, most of them related to music and one or the other with his wine-producing company and a small publishing house that he runs.
In a few days he will fly to Europe; she has a small tour of several cities in Spain and Paris and at the same time will be giving lectures at universities in Madrid and the Canary Islands.
In the meantime, what has him quite excited is his appearance as a special guest at The Game Awards 10–Year Concert, a show this weekend at the Hollywood Bowl that will celebrate the role music plays in video games. With Lorne Balfe conducting the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the concert will feature musical segments from the games Arcane, Diablo, Elden Ring, Final Fantasy XVI, God of War, Hades, Hogwarts Legacy, League of Legends, Marvel’s Spider-Man , Starfield, Star Wars Jedi and The Last of Us; Gustavo Santaolalla —composer of the music for this latest game—, and the rock duo Tenacious D, will perform live.
One of his greatest pride is the popularization he made of the snort, the Andean instrument from which he does not part and to which he owes his music to be heard on all imaginable planes.
“In 2024 the 25th anniversary of the album ‘Ronroco’ is celebrated, the one that opened the doors to the cinema for me,” he said. “That instrument has taken me so many places.”
This kind of charango, until recently only known in the context of Andean music, has been present in, in addition to the records of Bajofondo —the contemporary tango group led by Santaolalla—, in the soundtracks in which he has collaborated, among them The Secret of the Mountain —with which he won an Oscar—, Babel, Amores Perros and The Motorcycle Diaries.
“It is an instrument that comes from the Andes, but I have taken it from there, I have taken it from the context of Andean music,” he said. “I use it for many things; I can play something that has remnants of Andean music, African music, Middle Eastern or American music, like in “The Last of Us”.
Fans must already know that HBO produced a series of the same name based on the video game. The Chilean Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey —in the father and daughter series— are the protagonists. Santaolalla created the main theme, where the first chords heard are precisely those of a hoarse.
“I am very happy with what happened with that instrument,” he said. “Nowadays you get on YouTube and it’s full of guys playing the snort, playing my songs and with tutorials, so it’s a very nice relationship I have with that instrument.”
Santaolalla is also working on a documentary about Nora Cortiñas, one of the founders of the Argentine organization Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and on Pedro Páramo, the first feature film by Rodrigo Prieto, who was a photographer for important Hollywood projects.
He is also working on the design of a snort and in the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of a trip he made with León Gieco through the roads of South America to record and document rural musicians.
In detail
That: Gustavo Santaolalla at The Game Awards 10–Year Concert
Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles
When: sunday 8pm
As: tickets from $15; hollywoodbowl.com reports