SOUND THINKING LATIN GRAMMY NOMINEE GUSTAVO SANTAOLALLA MATCHES TRADITIONAL MUSIC WITHE THE VERY CONTEMPORARY.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Music Writer

On a hot October morning inside his Echo Park studio, Gustavo Santaolalla finger-picks a plaintive melody on a ronroco - a fretted instrument with five sets of double strings that's popular in Andean music.

A haunting tune that recalls the remote villages of the high Andes isn't the sort of thing you might expect to hear from an influential producer in the rock-centric world of Latin alternative music. But after nearly 40 years of striding the terrain of Spanish-language rock, the 54-year-old Santaolalla (pronounced santa-oh-LAYA) decided now is a good time to start turning his attention elsewhere.

``What can I say? I like diversity,'' says the Latin Grammy nominee, days before embarking on a tour with soprano Dawn Upshaw to perform ``Ayre'' - the Carnegie Hall-commissioned song and chamber music work by Argentina-born composer Osvaldo Golijov - which includes a stop at Disney Hall on Friday.

As he puts it, trying new things keeps the creative juices flowing between his various projects. Santaolalla just returned from a European tour with his dance-floor endeavor, ``Bajofondo Tango Club,'' which has now led him to pursue making a pure tango record with one of its featured vocalists, Cristobal Respeto, a young throwback to Carlos Gardel.

He has also been working on a companion documentary and book to a series of recordings he recently completed and plans on releasing next year called ``Cafe de los Maestros,'' a sort of Argentine version of the Buena Vista Social Club that features a gathering of old-time tango singers, arrangers and players of the bandoneon (an accordionlike instrument). And he's currently writing music for ``Babel,'' the next film by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (``21 Grams''), although his most recent scores can be heard in the upcoming ``North Country'' and ``Brokeback Mountain.''

Yet the man - who Time magazine dubs ``The New Impresario'' in its ``25 Most Influential Hispanics in America'' issue - is perhaps best-known for producing groundbreaking acts, including the Colombian rocker Juanes, who in an e-mail praises Santaolalla for his ``high receptivity'' and ``his capacity to listen to ideas that others wouldn't be open to.'' In closing, he adds: ``His musicality is amazing.''

Juanes' third collaboration with Santaolalla, ``Mi Sangre,'' helped net the producer a Latin Grammy nomination.

``It's always nice when your work is recognized,'' Santaolalla says as he sits in the bright, airy conference room of his own Surco Records, which was founded in 1987 and has since produced many of rock en espanol's top artists, including Cafe Tacuba, Molotov and Julieta Venegas. Their CD covers decorate a wall in the room alongside albums made by Santaolalla in Argentina in the '70s with his band Arco Iris - meaning the Rainbow - which incorporated Eastern mysticism and psychedelic imagery into its Latin American folk-rock fusion.

``At the time, I was looked badly upon by the rock intelligentsia in Argentina,'' he recalls. ``They said, 'How could you mix a charango (another Andean stringed instrument) with rock?' But, for me, it was very important to look for an identity, a music that would express who we were and where we were coming from and our place in the world. To make music that was not only sung in Spanish but in some ways played in Spanish.''

Time has proven him right.

Nowadays, groups from throughout Latin America incorporate traditional folk music into contemporary pop environments. And as ``a great music lover,'' Santaolalla has spent a lifetime seeking these artists out.

One of the first albums he bought as a kid growing up in Buenos Aires was by the '60s Mexican group Los Teen Tops, who ``sang great rock 'n' roll songs like 'Maybelline' and 'Jail House Rock,' but in Spanish with Mexican slang,'' he says. ``That really influenced me a lot.'' And not just when it comes to producing rock acts.

Recently, Santaolalla produced the Deutsche Grammophon recording of ``Ayre,'' a song cycle that embraces Muslim, Jewish and Christian cultures.

``It's music that comes out of a classical world but transcends any genre,'' he says. And yet the album, which features Upshaw's vocals, was recorded like a pop record.

``I loved that whole aspect, because what it meant was that he was able to mike everybody more separately and had more control over each voice and instrument,'' Upshaw recalls. ``I think it's hard for people to really grab ahold of the idea that there are so many different ways that a piece can be heard just in terms of how it's recorded and how it's mixed, so he has a tremendous amount of influence.''

Of course, Santaolalla did more than just produce the piece by Golijov, the latter describing himself as a big fan of the rocker's early work.

``Gustavo was humongous in Argentina when I was a kid,'' says the 44-year-old ``Ayre'' composer and frequent arranger for the Kronos Quartet. ``He was like a young Bob Dylan. He wrote songs that kids today are still singing.''

While he was revered as a pioneer of Spanish-language rock in his native Argentina, he wasn't known in other parts of the world like Mexico, where Santaolalla traveled in the mid-'80s to tap into the rising music movement that was being spearheaded at the time by bands like Caifanes and Maldita Vecindad.

Golijov himself wondered whatever happened to Santaolalla. And then in the late '90s, David Harrington, the leader of the Kronos Quartet, with whom he frequently collaborates, mentioned that the group was working on a project with ``this great Argentinean producer, Gustavo Santaolalla.

``I almost fell off my chair,'' says Golijov, who would go on to arrange some instrumental tracks for the Santaolalla-produced ``Reves/Yosoy,'' the acclaimed 1999 double album by Cafe Tacuba. Since that time, the two have continued to collaborate on various projects, from the soundtrack for ``Amores Perros'' to Golijov's chamber opera ``Aindamar,'' about the death of the Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca, in which Santaolalla was invited to write music for one scene.

In ``Ayre,'' he contributes two songs. Santaolalla doesn't read musical notation, so he often stockpiles hundreds of songs on recorded demos, which especially came in handy during the making of ``Ayre.''

Golijov was looking for a nocturnal instrumental to go between a crazed Sardinian song and a Spanish lullaby. And so Santaolalla played him one from memory.

``His memory is extraordinary,'' Golijov says, recalling, ``Once, he produced 'Silvestre Revueltas: Sensemaya' for Kronos, which is an incredibly complex piece that changes meter every bar. I mean, I don't think Kronos could play it by memory, but Gustavo heard it a couple of times and memorized it. He's phenomenal.''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

SIXTH ANNUAL LATIN GRAMMY AWARDS 

What: The Latin Recording Academy hands out 43 awards to Spanish- and Portuguese-language recording artists, musicians, songwriters, producers and other creative and technical professionals in this three-hour delayed broadcast from the Shrine Auditorium. With performances by Julieta Venegas, Kumbia Kings and Los Tigres del Norte.

Where: Univision (Channel 34).

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 3.

AYRE

What: Dawn Upshaw, accompanied by Gustavo Santaolalla, performs the chamber music work by Argentina-born composer Osvaldo Golijov.

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Friday.

Tickets: $28 to $67. [phone]; www.ticketmaster.com.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) FIRST STRING

From rock en espanol to Disney Hall, it's not problem for Latin Grammy nominee Gustavo Santaolalla

(2) no caption (Gustavo Santaolalla)

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer