Arco Iris, the band Santaolalla co‑founded in 1967, was not merely a rock group but an experiment in communal living and spiritual discipline that read like a countercultural oddity. Members—including wind instrumentalist Ara Tokatlian and vocalist Danais Winnycka, who acted as the group's spiritual guide—lived together, embraced celibacy, vegetarianism, abstained from alcohol and drugs, and explored Eastern religious practices. The experiment produced music that helped define Argentina’s rock nacional, but it also generated internal tensions: Santaolalla later warned that “any group that is so inner directed runs the risk of turning into a cult.” Those tensions erupted into a very personal intervention when, amid an escalating dispute with Tokatlian and a feeling of oppression inside the communal life, Santaolalla called his mother. She organized what he describes as a literal rescue operation to get him out of the band. He left after seven albums, formed the harder‑edged group Soluna, and the episode stands as a curious, theatrical origin tale—equal parts creative utopia and claustrophobic spiritual experiment—that haunted the early narrative of a musician who would later flee political dictatorship and reinvent himself internationally.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1960s-1970s
Arco Iris: The Rock Band That Borderlined on a Spiritual Commune and a Family 'Rescue' Mission
Arco Iris (Gustavo Santaolalla's early band) / 1960s-1970s
Arco Iris, the band Santaolalla co‑founded in 1967, was not merely a rock group but an experiment in communal living and spiritual discipline that read like a countercultural oddity. Members—including wind instrumentalist Ara Tokatlian and vocalist Danais Winnycka, who acted as the group's spiritual guide—lived together, embraced celibacy, vegetarianism, abstained from alcohol and drugs, and explored Eastern religious practices. The experiment produced music that helped define Argentina’s rock nacional, but it also generated internal tensions: Santaolalla later warned that “any group that is so inner directed runs the risk of turning into a cult.” Those tensions erupted into a very personal intervention when, amid an escalating dispute with Tokatlian and a feeling of oppression inside the communal life, Santaolalla called his mother. She organized what he describes as a literal rescue operation to get him out of the band. He left after seven albums, formed the harder‑edged group Soluna, and the episode stands as a curious, theatrical origin tale—equal parts creative utopia and claustrophobic spiritual experiment—that haunted the early narrative of a musician who would later flee political dictatorship and reinvent himself internationally.
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