Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla (; born 19 August 1951) is an Argentine composer, record producer and musician. He is the recipient of numerous accolades for his works, including two Academy Awards for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, two Grammy Awards and 17 Latin Grammy Awards. He is known for his minimalist approach to composing and for his influence in the Latin rock music genre.
Involved in music from a young age, he began a professional career in 1967 founding the band Arco Iris, who were influential to the rock nacional genre. Fleeing the rule of the Argentine military junta and the dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process, Santaolalla moved to Los Angeles 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, establishing the record label Surco Records within Universal Music and producing records for over 100 artists. Notable records he produced were several from Café Tacuba, including their acclaimed 1994 album Re, Julieta Venegas's 2000 album Bueninvento, and Juanes's 2005 hit single "La Camisa Negra". Santaolalla established the neotango group Bajofondo in 2001.
Music from Santaolalla's 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. He scored I Come with the Rain (2009) and Biutiful (2010). Santaolalla further gained recognition for his work on The Last of Us game series, composing the 2013 game and its 2020 sequel. In 2014, he composed his first animated film, The Book of Life, and his first Argentine film, Wild Tales. He scored the short film Borrowed Time (2015) and co-composed the documentary Before the Flood (2016). Santaolalla returned to adapt his music for the 2023 The Last of Us TV series and composed an original score for October 2024 showings of the 1931 Spanish-language Dracula film by the Los Angeles Opera.
Not learned in reading or writing musical notation, Santaolalla prefers composing his scores mostly by himself. Favouring instruments like the ronroco, he adopts a minimalistic approach when composing and prefers to capture humanistic elements of performances. He compares his philosophy of favouring minimalism in music to parkour, comparing the calculations of athletes before landing to his measured selection of musical notes before playing them. By contrast, his live performances have been noted for their vibrancy. For his influence in Latin music, Santaolalla was recognized as a BMI Icon during the 15th annual Latin Awards Ceremony in 2008 and received the Latin Grammy Trustees Award in 2023. In his personal life, he has two children with his wife, and is engaged with winemaking.
Early life Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla was born in El Palomar, Argentina on 19 August 1951. Santaolalla was born to a stay-at-home mother and a father working in the advertising industry for J. Walter Thompson. His family has roots in Spain; his grandfather was Andalusian and his grandmother was Basque. When Santaolalla was five, he was given his first guitar by his grandmother for his birthday; he "immediately connected in a sort of a spiritual level with the music", and began musical tutelage with a hired teacher. 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". Santaolalla had also lived in the community of Ciudad Jardín Lomas del Palomar. Santaolalla's family would buy him instruments and support his musical activities, though they initially did not believe this was a viable profession for him; Santaolalla said that this attitude was only brief, with his relatives quickly supporting his music as a serious endeavor for him.
In his pre-teenage years, Santaolalla wrote songs in English which "mimick[ed]" the music of bands like the Beatles; at twelve, he was gifted his first electric guitar. 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. Santaolalla had been an altar boy at a Catholic church, aspiring to join the seminary, but had a falling out with his dedication to religion after pondering why God would let evil and Hell exist despite His goodness. The priest had called Santaolalla's father regarding performing an exorcism on the boy for his "heresy", but Santaolalla's father supported his exit from the church. By 1966, Santaolalla, then 15, had been arrested by the military juntas governing Argentina, according to him because he had long hair and played an electric guitar, despite not partaking in drugs or being involved in political activities. The first time Santaolalla was arrested, his father arrived to collect him, questioning the authorities about what crime Santaolalla had committed. The arrests continued throughout his adolescence.
Career 1967–2001: Early career and bands
Santaolalla's music career began in 1967 when he co-founded the group Arco Iris, a rock band that helped create rock nacional. He played guitar and sang in the band, which included wind instrument player , bass player , percussionist and their vocalist , who became their spiritual guide. The group lived a communal lifestyle, practicing celibacy, vegetarianism, forgoeing alcohol and drugs, and were engaged with Eastern religion. The band rose to prominence with the song "Mañana campestre" from their third album .
After seven Arco Iris albums, Santaolalla left following a disagreement with Tokatlian, 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". Santaolalla called his mother, who orchestrated an operation to "rescue" him from the community he had found to be "oppressive". Santaolalla thereafter founded the hard rock group Soluna. 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. He formed the group Wet Picnic, but had no commercial success with them. At this point, Santaolalla described his life as "[Eight years of eating shit every morning]", and lived a "[fantasy]" of a drug-abusing rock star. Afterwards he lived in a hotel in New York, experiencing poverty with his creative partner Aníbal Kerpel.
In the 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. This venture was called "De Ushuaia a la Quiaca", respectively referring to the southernmost and northernmost towns in Argentina, Ushuaia and La Quiaca. From 1981 to 1985, in four years, he and Gieco travelled to document and experience folk music, aiming to "look for the essence of" where the music of Argentina's past came from. Gieco had originally wanted to invite musicians from across the country to Buenos Aires, but Santaolalla wanted them to visit the musicians where they lived. 450 concerts were performed during this journey. Santaolalla's embrace of the musicians' musical styles caused them to become prevalent in his work, namely the ten-string Andean instrument called the ronroco. It was at this point Santaolalla began a relationship with his future wife Alejandra, who the musicians hired as a photographer to document the trip alongside the direction of the musical guide Leda Valladares.
Santaolalla released the album in 1982, and became a leading figure of the Mexico-based rock en español movement; the Los Angeles Times described his contribution to Latin rock music as becoming "the most transcendent producer" in its history, and Billboard wrote he is considered one of the creators of Latin alternative music who helped develop it to "[global acclaim]". Santaolalla began establishing himself as a record producer upon his return to Buenos Aires in the 80s, with the music executive Jesús López helping him establish Surco Records within Universal Music. Santaolalla collaborated with co-producer Aníbal Kerpel on albums for numerous artists, including Café Tacuba, Maldita Vecindad, Julieta Venegas, Molotov and Juanes, and other Argentine artists like Divididos and Bersuit Vergarabat; Santaolalla produced over 100 albums at that point in time, for artists he described as being on a "[search for their identity through music]". Santaolalla says the records he produced consisted largely of debut albums for artists, and felt that his impact helped put them "[on the map]".
Santaolalla produced Café Tacuba's 1992 debut album, and their 1994 album Re—considered among the greatest Latin albums. In 1995 Santaolalla released the album GAS, and in 1998, he released the album Ronroco, consisting of solo works recorded over 14 years, and featuring the titular instrument alongside the charango and the Andean pan flute. He also produced Juana Molina's 1996 debut studio album Rara, as well as Julieta Venegas's praised 2000 album Bueninvento. Santolalla formed the neotango group Bajofondo in 2001, for whom he plays guitar. Billboard credited this group with modernizing tango with electronic, modern elements.
2000–2013: Rise to fame with film scores
The attention that Santaolalla's record Ronroco attained led to a career expansion into composing film scores. American director Michael Mann first used Santaolalla's song "Iguazu" in his film The Insider (1999). Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu heard Ronroco, leading him to ask Santaolalla to compose his films Amores perros (2000) and 21 Grams (2003), creating a recurring collaboration between the two. Before directing his debut Amores perros Iñárritu was a radio DJ, and Santaolalla—being busy—initially turned down the offer from the novice. Santaolalla says he woke up in the middle of one night and considered, "suppose this guy is a genius, and this film is amazing", and corresponded with Iñárritu, and was convinced to work on the film. Of his transition into scores, Santaolalla said he had "no plan, no master plan. But I always had this love for films". Santaolalla produced Café Tacuba's 2003 album Cuatro Caminos. Iñárritu introduced Santaolalla to Walter Salles, and Santaolalla composed the score for Salles's biographical film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), for which he won the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music at the 58th British Academy Film Awards.
Santaolalla produced Juanes's album Mi Sangre (2004), from which the 2005 single "La Camisa Negra" topped Hot Latin Songs chart for eight weeks. Santaolalla wrote the score for Niki Caro's drama film North Country (2005). Santaolalla organized the Café de Los Maestros project, which included a concert, , a book, and . That year, Santaolalla provided the instrumental music for the soundtrack to the Contemporary Western romance film Brokeback Mountain. 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. According to Santaolalla, he composed 100% of the score before principal photography began. From Brokeback Mountain, Santaolalla composed the song "A Love That Will Never Grow Old", which won the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Santaolalla composed the score to the 2006 psychological drama film Babel, another collaboration with Iñárritu.