Ronroco

Santaolalla, Gustavo

album cover

Magnificent Instrumental Textures from the Creator of the Brokeback Mountain Soundtrack

The folk instruments of the Andes, fixtures of subway stations and street corners all over the world, never sounded quite like this before. Growing up in Argentina, the composer and multi-instrumentalist Gustavo Santaolalla learned the special resonating characteristics of instruments like the ronroco (a ukulele-like four-stringed instrument originally made from an armadillo shell) and the charango (a five-stringed small guitar). He applied that knowledge to his shadowy original études, simple songs that celebrate the soulful tones each instrument produces. Though sometimes the ronroco is used on a distinctly plucked melody, it's often an element in a stringed-instrument latticework, part of fantastically billowing chord clusters.

Santaolalla's spare, reflective pieces exude the serenity of massage-table music, but they're hardly New Age meanderings—their sturdy and prideful melodies exhibit reverence for what sounds, at times, like folk songs from some long vanished culture.

The picturesque Ronroco was recorded at a heady moment for Santaolalla. He'd spent the previous few years producing some of the landmark works of rock en español, including critically acclaimed records by Café Tacuba. At the same time, his career as a film composer was taking off: Over the next few years his music would help define the thick moods of such films as The Insider, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Brokeback Mountain. If you've been transported by those soundtracks (and even if you haven't), seek this out: Its magnificent textures amount to a concentrated dose of Santaolalla's genius.

Genre: World, Argentina
Released: 1998, Nonesuch
Key Tracks: "Jardin," "Del pago," "Atacana," "La vuelta"
Catalog Choice: The Motorcycle Diaries, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Next Stop: Juana Molina: Segundo
After That: Atahualpa Yupanqui: Solo lo mejor de
Book Pages: 672–673