A back-breaker of an agenda

The affable fellow washing dishes by hand at the sink is not somebody's South American houseboy. He is the celebrated Gustavo Santaolalla, a Renaissance music man who's currently sailing on a confluence of successes in music styles as diverse as cutting-edge Latin rock, sophisticated classical and, most recently, the haunting film score to "Brokeback Mountain," which has earned him his first Oscar nomination.

The former Argentine hippie who now hopscotches the world's most prestigious stages doesn't just do his own dishes at La Casa, his cozy if cramped studio complex in Echo Park. He also does his own introductions. With no manager and no full-time publicist, Santaolalla makes unabashedly self-promotional pitches to the famous people he's courting within the elite creative circles to which Oscar nominees are privy. Often, these are people who've never heard of this guy with the multisyllabic surname, though he virtually invented — then defined and dominated — the field of rock en español over three decades as bandleader, guitarist, songwriter and producer.

After kitchen duty on this busy morning, Santaolalla is probing the possibility of landing Depeche Mode's David Gahan as a guest singer on the new album by Santaolalla's esoteric electro-tango fusion band, Bajofondo Tango Club. He takes a call from the British singer's manager, pacing in a sunny den off the kitchen and ticking off his packed calendar of upcoming projects like a verbal résumé: concerts in London and New York for Osvaldo Golijov's "Ayre," the classical work that he produced last year for Deutsche Grammophon, a "wonderful record," if he does say so himself. New Latin albums by Argentine rock band Semilla and Spanish Gypsy Antonio Carmona. Plus another film score, for "Babel," the latest movie by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Amores Perros"), starring Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt.

One career highlight Santaolalla doesn't mention: the recent Golden Globe he won for "A Love That Will Never Grow Old," an original song from "Brokeback" performed by Emmylou Harris and co-written by Bernie Taupin.

"Great," says Santaolalla, getting a nibble of interest from Gahan's representative. "That'll be fantastic. I'll send you a package with all sorts of goodies. Ah, I'd love to, man."

He hangs up and winds his way down a spiral staircase leading to a basement-level office where two young workers handle the music maven's snowballing business. He stands on a step overlooking the room and itemizes the "goodies" he wants mailed to Gahan — a CD of Mexican music by the Kronos Quartet titled "Nuevo" that he produced, the "Brokeback" soundtrack, plus his music from two other films: "The Motorcycle Diaries," the Che Guevara road saga, and "21 Grams," the second in González Iñárritu's gritty urban trilogy.

Santaolalla finally sits still for the first time this morning. Looking relaxed in an exercise outfit despite multiple looming deadlines, he reflects on how it feels to be hawking himself like a novice. It's as if he were still the anonymous immigrant who arrived in Los Angeles 28 years ago with a guitar on his shoulder.

"I can't take for granted that people know who I am," he says. "Do you think most people knew who I was when I got on stage for the Golden Globes? They didn't have the slightest idea."

But he takes no offense.

The media like to hang monikers on the well-known, he observes, and he's had his share to shake. Time magazine has called him "The New Impresario," one of the country's 25 most influential Hispanics; he has his own label, Surco, distributed by Universal, and his own music publishing company. In Latin America, he's been dubbed the King Midas of Spanish rock for his work with the genre's most respected stars, including Colombia's Juanes and Mexico's Café Tacuba. And back home, he's now called the Golden Argentine, a native son who publishes art books through a company named Retina and plans to make Malbec wines, a local variety, under a brand named for his son, Don Juan Nahuel, on a northern Argentina vineyard named for his daughter, Luna.

As long as he keeps moving, Santaolalla figures, the labels can't stick.

"We are all dynamic," he says, sitting across from a mosaic of 63 CD covers representing a portion of a career output that's now approaching 100. "We have our contradictions and we go through life sort of correcting our course, always mutating. But once they turn you into a personality, you become a cartoon and you lose all those nuances that come with being a person."

Santaolalla, 54, is fond of saying that he must have an agent in heaven because opportunities just keep falling in his path. In a career that started with teenage stardom in Buenos Aires, every move now seems to be a steppingstone on his road to Hollywood fame.

And to think that he credits it all to his love for a small South American guitar with the trilled name of ronroco.

The seed for the "Brokeback" score was planted at Sundance two years ago. At a party after the world debut of "Motorcycle Diaries," film music supervisor Kathy Nelson suggested that Santaolalla meet director Ang Lee, who was working on an unusual new western.