With the death of Indio Solari, Argentine rock lost one of the most influential artists in its history, who together with Los Redondos forged an unprecedented cultural phenomenon that attracted crowds of up to 300 thousand people, despite remaining on the fringes of the music industry.
Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, the real name of Solari’s mythical band, produced their own albums, controlled their distribution, cultivated a distant relationship with the press and did not apply conventional marketing strategies. They never joined big festivals.
With the slogan “alone and at night”, they began to play in the mid-seventies under the cloak of secrecy of the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) and exploded with the revitalization brought by the return of democracy.
While Charly García revolutionized the scene with his artistic innovation, Luis Alberto Spinetta (1950-2012) elevated the poetic language of rock and Gustavo Cerati (1959-2014) became the exportable face of Argentine music with Soda Stereo, the ‘Indio’ forged an unparalleled popular myth.
Despite this distance from anything that smelled commercial, in the nineties of the twentieth century, the popularity of Los Redondos surpassed the countercultural spirit and their songs began to be played on the most important radio stations at the request of the public.
Just as Spinetta’s work found a strong reception in intellectual circles and Cerati’s was associated with an urban and cosmopolitan aesthetic, the ‘Indio’ built a unique connection with broad popular sectors that found in his concerts spaces of belonging and collective identification.
It was in this way that the band became a mass phenomenon that cut across all social classes.
The so-called ‘misas ricoteras’ mobilized the faithful from all corners of the country in gatherings that often exceeded the capacity of the authorized spaces and police control. Sometimes there were episodes of violence, one of the reasons that led to the separation of the band at the beginning of the 19th century.
The phenomenon, far from abating, moved to the artist’s solo career. In his last concert, held on March 11, 2017 in Olavarría, a city of only 120 thousand inhabitants, the ‘Indio’ gathered between 200 and 300 thousand ‘ricoteros’.
That night, two attendees died in the midst of incidents caused by the overflow of the public, in a venue whose capacity was insufficient to accommodate the number of people who tried to enter.
The legacy of Argentine singer Indio Solari
His lyrics, deliberately ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations, were read by different generations as a reflection of the frustrations, uncertainties and disappointments that marked different periods of Argentine history.
In ‘Oktubre’ (1986), considered one of the fundamental albums of Argentine rock, many found references to the control, confinement and forms of authoritarianism of the dictatorship, in tension with the opening of the democratic recovery.
A decade later, ‘Vamos las bandas’ or ‘Un ángel para tu soledad’ were associated with the experiences of exclusion, uprooting and search for belonging that broad sectors of society were going through in parallel to the neoliberal reforms carried out by the government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999).
Compared to Soda Stereo, who filled stadiums in Latin America, or Charly García, consecrated by many as the number one of rock in Spanish, Indio Solari’s decision to remain in an independent circuit limited his international projection.
But in the Argentine territory, from north to south and from east to west, reported Agencia EFE, a phenomenon of great importance for the Argentine identity was forged.
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