“Living alone costs life,” sang Carlos Alberto Solari, the Indio. The unmistakable voice of the band Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota had begun as a murmur in marginal circuits, in the late seventies and early eighties, and became an almost religious phenomenon of inescapable and massive resonance in Argentina and beyond, the wild heart of a popular identity cultivated around its cryptic poetry and its particular melody. That baritone voice, with unexpected and captivating modulations, can only be heard in recordings. At 77 years old, Solari, one of the great artists of Argentine rock, as a composer and singer, an icon of the counterculture, died this Friday at his home, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. “The future arrived a while ago,” El Indio also sang.
For a decade, Solari had suffered from Parkinson’s disease and had abandoned the stage. “I’m not afraid. Curiosity is bigger than fear,” he declared when he announced that he was sick. Since then, he had withdrawn further from a public life to which he had always been averse, to which he had only conceded, like a rebellious craftsman, his expression as a musician.
On Friday morning, Solari was found passed out at his home, in an indoor pool. An assistant found him and, when emergency doctors arrived, they found that he had died. Since he had a blow to the head, the prosecutor’s office on duty ordered an autopsy. The preliminary report, released this Friday afternoon, stated that due to a hemorrhagic stroke the musician “died immediately” and that “there was no drowning.”
Indio Solari was born in the city of Paraná, in 1949, and had grown up in La Plata, 50 kilometers from the Argentine capital. There he had met the guitarist Eduardo Sky Beilinson, with whom he would father the Redonditos de Ricota around 1976.. The band created one of the most influential discographies in Latin America, with a dozen albums: Gulp! (1985), Oct. (1986), A bayon for the idiotic eye (1988), ¡Bro! ¡Bro! (1989), Wolf loose, lamb tied (1993) y Luzbelito (1996), among others; with and the region. With verses and phrases that conquered the durability of his memory: “every prisoner is a politician”; “luxury is vulgarity”; “you dream of the bonfire where you are always the firewood”; “When the night is darkest, the day comes in your heart.”
Towards the end of the 80s, the band had become a symbol of artistic independence and irrepressible convocation, conceived outside the domain of the major record companies. His developed the rituals of a unique idiosyncrasy, “the ricotera mass”, whose main emblem may have been “the largest pogo in the world”, the multitudinous almost tribal dance that exploded the live performance of songs like Yes Yes Yes.
The other side of the massiveness that accompanied the Redonditos throughout their career was . The confrontations between their audience and the police became part, for many, of the culture associated with the band. In 1991, a young man who had come to listen to them, a case that is still synonymous with police brutality. The repeated incidents pushed the Redonditos to space out their appearances and take them outside of Buenos Aires, to different places in the country that would call for the pilgrimage of their faithful followers.
The band disbanded in 2001, when it had reached the peak of public and critical recognition. After three years of silence, Solari formed another group, focused on his figure: The Fundamentalists of Air Conditioning. Under that name he published five albums, from The treasure of the innocent (2004) until The nightingale, love and death (2018), and starred in various live performances. The last one on stage was in 2017, in the city of Olavarría, and brought together about 300,000 people. From that moment on, Solari’s participation in the recitals was virtual or through recorded messages.
Solari made of himself an elusive and enigmatic character, a figure who, together with his talent as an artist, cemented the source from which his magnetism largely emanated. But, at the same time, he did not avoid speaking out politically when he considered it necessary. For example, he questioned the judicial sentence against former president Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015) and even visited her last year at her home, where she remains detained. Regarding the current president, Javier Milei, he was definitive: “I don’t know if he is crazy or a figurehead of an interest. I never thought that a guy with a chainsaw could become president and pass all the filters,” he declared in 2024.
Last month, Solari was honored by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) with the title of doctor for the sake of honor. He did not attend the event, but his last public appearance could be seen there, a video recorded in which he thanked the tribute. After learning of his death, messages of sadness and farewell multiplied on social networks and the media. “Have a good trip my dear friend, goodbye,” Skay Beilinson wrote on his Instagram account. The family and those closest to the musician announced that they will organize a public farewell this Saturday, still without details about the location. Not being able or willing to wait to show their love, different groups of followers gathered together to pay tribute in the Plaza de Mayo, in the center of Buenos Aires, at the end of the afternoon this Friday: a crowd of people of different ages and social backgrounds sang and danced the songs of the Indian with the devotion of the people for their few idols.
The illness that marked his last years had made death a recurring subject of reflection for Solari. In his autobiography Memories that lie a little (Sudamericana, 2019), based on dialogues with the writer Marcelo Figueras, the musician outlined how he imagined his departure: “When it comes time to leave, I would like to do it in the Leonard Cohen way: getting up in the middle of a poker game without attracting attention, leaving the cards on the table, without interrupting the game and with the confidence that my companions will not turn over the cards to guess what I was up to. I like it because of how austere it is, that idea: to leave quietly, knowing that your time has come to lose and without distracting the rest of the players, who deserve to move forward.” A few lines later, he added: “I only hope that death finds me alive.”
