Among vines and native trees of the mountain, under a pergola, the musician Gustavo Santaolalla resting in the shade on a hot Mendoza afternoon. In his hand he holds a glass of white wine, of the Gewürtztraminer variety, which in German means spicy, a slow ripening grape with aromas of tropical fruits, citrus fruits, flowers and spices.
It’s just a 10-day break, with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, among other intimate affections accompanying him for most of his life at his home in Los Angeles or on tour in Europe and Latin America.
Gustavo Santaolalla, the music producer who won two Oscars and 19 Grammys, settled on his farm La Luna, from his Cielo y Tierra winery, in the agricultural town of Lunlunta, Luján de Cuyo. It’s the 4th time next year to Argentina, but the first post-pandemic visit to Mendoza.
At 71, with more than 50 years of music career and 40 living out of the country, says feel an Argentine who hasn’t lost his customs and not even a bit his Buenos Aires speech. received clarion before traveling to Buenos Aires to play this Monday November 28th with Bajofondo at the Coliseo theater. It will be a show to benefit the mental health programs of the Ineco Foundation. The next stop on his tour is Quito, Ecuador.
The man who doesn’t stop
santaolalla He says he’s better than ever and full of plans. Musician of video games, films, series and documentaries, member of various bands, winemakerproducer of yerbatero, gourmet and passionate about the new generations of Argentine trap.
He praises the talent of Argentine trap and gives him a special mention L-Ghentbecause he says “he managed to assemble cumbia with urban music in a very interesting way”.
He warns that he does not want to talk about politics or join “the hatred of one side and the other”, because he prefers to build like an Argentine who opens borders. “I really like to think that there is an Argentina that is expanding all over the world, and I am part of that group,” he says.
-Do you still compose a lot?
-I compose when they ask me for a series or a video game, for Bajofondo and many times for me, because it also helps me when they ask me for music. I’m working on a project with Rick Rubin who was a producer Tom Petti Y hot red peppers (considered by MTV the most important producer of the last 20 years and the magazine Time included him in 2007, in the list of the 100 most influential people in the world).
We are starting a project, but I can’t say much more. He has been looking for me and it never ceases to amaze me when something like this happens to me, like when Eric Clapton sought me out to participate in the documentary about his life and now i have a friendship with him.
-How did you enter the video game market?
-I have been working on the video game for nine years The Last of Us, of which 40 million games have been sold. A miniseries of this game is coming out for HBO in January, and they also called me. They spent the same budget as last season’s Game of thrones. The day the trailer for the series came out, it had 38 million views.
I recently finished the music for a documentary for National Geographic about the Tompkins, the US couple who donated land in Argentine and Chilean Patagonia, and in Iberá. And I composed the music for a Netflix series for Germany, based on a best seller. Also, I’m recording a new record with Bajofondo and producing a very interesting Mexican girl, Karina Sofia, who mixes urban music with regional Mexican music.
-You seem to work more than when you were young.
-I work as before but now I have a team that helps me. In many ways they are better than ever. And think about what it means to have grandchildren, an inheritance, to feel that what you do can have continuity.
Do you think about death?
-With life and years you happen to consider death and the end. Since the time of Arcobaleno I have really liked The Stoics, the thought of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. His principles are very interesting to me. That of the Memento moriwhich is knowing you are going to die and that makes you think and face it.
It seems to me a very important point, as well as discipline and having a protocol with your life that goes from the spiritual to the material and the physical. I’m in a moment where I think I have a balance in all of that.
-Did you miss going on tour?
I really like to go on tour. I did two tours in Europe this year. The audience we have outside is 80% local and only 20% Argentinian. There are also people who follow me for the music from the movies or for the video game, which has brought me a young audience.
“I love the trap”
-Do you like the trap?
-I love trap, which comes from young people and the underground. He’s invaluable and he’s having a lot of fun. Like everything, there are people who are opportunists and it is a genre that has opened up so much that it is commercially reconciled. But there are others that aren’t, which are valid types like Wos, YSY A, Ducky, and Thunder.
Something happened with these musicians, which I wished would happen: this country suffers from a gerontocracy, and you had to be old to be recognized in music. It happened to me from bands like Divided and Bersuit that became huge after 20 years in the business. And, on the contrary, I come from a generation, with Luis (Alberto Spinetta), with Manal, with Almendra and Arco Iris, who were famous when we were 18 and 19.
But this, for many years, stopped happening. And all of a sudden these guys came in and I said how good they are, I love that they fill stadiums being so young.
Do you also like L-Ghent?
-I love L-Ghent. It seems to me that musically he proposes super interesting things by combining cumbia with urban music. He’s a famous artist, and if he wants to work with me, I’d be happy to do so.
Do you use social networks?
-I have Instagram but I don’t use Twitter because it seems to me a concentration of poop and negative vibes. I’m not interested in hate, with those who think differently or in the same way; I don’t like it. I am perfectly aware of everything that is happening politically in Argentina and in the world, but I don’t want to talk.
-How did you like the criticisms of the documentary miniseries “Break everything”, because the bands you produced appeared and others were missing?
-Of the 90 artists interviewed in the documentary, I only worked with 13. It’s a documentary about the history of rock in Latin America, not about rock in Argentina. There are Café Tacvba, from Mexico, Aterciopelados, from Colombia and Los Prisioneros, from Chile, among others. There are bands from here that are very important like La Renga, but they haven’t had as much repercussions in Latin America. With the Redondos we made an exception because it’s an incredible phenomenon that we couldn’t ignore.
Also, I was one of the six executive producers, not the lead one. I think the series opened the discussion about rock spoken in our language and it was a valid debate because Latin American rock is not having an extraordinary moment.
a winemaker
-Are you a wine rock star?
-I am a winemaker (winemaker). My specialty has always been alternative. I won my Oscars with alternative films. I have clear ideas about which wines I want to create. The best thing that can happen to us is that someone asks who makes this wine and not that they come to taste it because it is Gustavo Santaolalla’s wine.
Luckily it has happened to me several times that someone praised the wine without knowing that it came from my cellar. Once the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal called me and said: “I’m in Buenos Aires with Jorge Drexler to eat and I’m drinking a wine that is excellent, I see the label and it’s yours, congratulations, damn it”.
-When did you decide to venture into winemaking?
-17 years ago I bought the vineyard estate. I have a special relationship with Mendoza because my secondary school chose this province for their graduation trip. We went to the clubs in Chacras de Coria and there was a DJ who had a Canned Heat album. The music they played was amazing. I loved Mendoza there and later I came to play with Arco Iris and had to jam in a vineyard, and that memory has always stayed with me. I later moved to California, which has a lot to do with the Mendoza landscape.
I had no idea what it was like to make wine, but one evening, while we were having a barbecue with Ricardo Vaccari (percussionist, member of his group), and he had renegotiated a contract with Universal, we decided to make this investment with my wife .
-You are now launching a new line of wines.
-To continue growing with the winery, it was essential to form a new partnership (with the Licores Argentinos company) that could better manage the industrial and commercial aspects, to get what he wanted. Every year we sell more wines, the new variety line is called Callejón de las Brujas, a new venture in high-end wines. I use my intuition a lot. Just as I can’t read or write music, I have clear ideas about what I want to compose. And the same thing happens with wine.
-What wines did you want to get?
-With the oenologist Juan Carlos Chavero we waited five years before putting the wines on sale. I liked the idea of having different levels of Malbec, some that were easier to drink, like Celador, and others like Don Juan Nahuel, reserve line, that were more robust. Thanks to this work we obtained three medals at the international Selectiones Mondiales du Vin competition, held in Québec.
-What wines do you like?
-I don’t drink much, but I like Spanish, French and Italian wines, and Oregon pinot noirs, but I don’t choose for particular brands or labels. In Argentina, I like mine. It was always clear to me that the wines had the finesse of European wines, but knowing they were New World wines. We didn’t want them to be overly fruity, but rather with some acidity. A combination of the new and the old world.
Until 2019 I participated in the first cuts. Now there’s a line of work that’s been established and we’re pretty clear about what we want.
-Are you interested in biodynamics, the influence of stars on wine?
-Yes, totally. The same thing happens with music. Instruments, for example, on guitars now the tops are taken from German or Italian pinots. They are trees planted more than a thousand meters high, but are cut down at a certain moment of the lunar cycle.
Do you have other agricultural projects?
-Yes, an organic yerba mate from Misiones, without agrochemicals or labor exploitation. We are working to promulgate a law regulating the work of the tareferos. We work with small producers.
-What point of union do music and wine have?
-The interesting thing about wine is that it is something creative like music, and that changes as you play, in wine you depend on the weather, the watering, the sun, and even if you have it under control, you don’t know if it comes out something better or less. Same with music a song can take on a life of its own.
The music is completed by the listener and the viewer. You can work in the studio for a week and when you listen to it with a friend you discover a louder guitar than you’ve ever heard before. It becomes successful when many people experience the same thing with what you did.
-What does Argentina mean to you?
-It’s my place, where I come from and I take it with me wherever I go, but I have a vision of an Argentina of dispersion. I am one of the Argentines who have expanded the map, I have been out of the country for 40 years and I always had the idea of making a corresponding magazine. I was very interested in interviewing Argentines in different fields, who have not lost their identity.
I have seen other Argentines outside who are no longer Argentines. In my case, I haven’t lost my accent or anything. And I really like to think that there is an Argentina that is expanding in the world.
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Source: Clarin
