The unexpected news of the death of rock icon Indio Solari took a whole country by surprise on Friday, leading to a nationwide mourning.

The information began to roam social networks at 9 a.m. and soon reached headlines at news portals, TV and radio. Fellow members of his solo band Los Fundamentalistas del Aire Acondicionado confirmed Solari’s demise off the record. 

A police squad was sent to his home in Parque Leloir as a routine procedure.

Carlos Indio Solari was the frontman of highly popular band Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, which began playing in the mid-Seventies, recorded their first albums a decade later and reached enormous popularity in the Nineties. 

His solo career broke all attendance records, with an incredible show for 400,000 fans in 2017.

He was 77 years old and retired in 2023 due to advanced Parkinson’s disease but continued recording songs as El Mister y los Marsupiales.

A true phenomenon

The rise of popularity of Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota exceeds the usual dynamics of a rock group. For starters, they were pioneers of independent production, working outside the handful of concert promoters in Argentina. 

The band began playing in their hometown of La Plata in the late Seventies, during the Argentine dictatorship, and by 1979 reached Buenos Aires for the first time.

Those first shows were a blueprint of their career: they rented a theater once a year, usually on December 28, and played for a small crowd of friends and fans. 

The informal setting added to the mystique, as a man in disguise handed out small cheese biscuits — or redonditos de ricotta — inspired by their exotic name. They also explained that the group’s leader was an invisible Patricio Rey who channeled the music through them.

Slow but steady, in 1985 Solari, guitarist Eduardo Skay Beilinson and their manager Carmen Poli Castro raised enough money to finance their first recording, Gulp! 

They were one of the most popular acts in the underground circuit during the early years of democracy in Argentina, with 150-200 loyal fans that soon became 1,000 and eventually sold-out large venues.

Jump to massive fame

By 1989, Los Redondos, as their audience loved to call them, found out that every place they played felt small. They searched for bigger arenas and open-air football clubs, always leaving people outside. 

Somehow, a blessing became a curse of sorts. More security measures had to be taken, and every so often there occurred a tragedy: police detained fan Walter Bulacio outside Obras stadium in 1991, and he died a few days later. 

The band decided to stop performing in Buenos Aires and began touring around the country. This only made their mystique grow even more: their fans began to follow their every step, in a way similar to the Grateful Dead in the United States.

Every concert became a nightmare in logistics, but meanwhile they outdid themselves with new albums and an impeccable collection of hits. Concert setlists became longer and their shows exceeded the two hour standard.

All this tension, plus Solari’s dream to go solo, led to two packed shows at the Monumental River Plate stadium in 2000. Only two concerts later, in Uruguay and Córdoba province, the band began a hiatus and finally announced the end.

Fans mourned the demise of their beloved band, but soon discovered that their chances to see Solari and Beilinson multiplied: each one began a solo career that included Redondos’ songs in their shows.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.