The Estadio Único de La Plata was once again filled for a night of ricotero fervor, this Saturday, December 6, they performed The Air Conditioning Fundamentalists celebrating two decades of life with a show that, according to live coverage estimates, brought together around 60,000 people in the stadium, in addition to a YouTube broadcast that amplified the reach of the event.
Although Carlos “El Indio” Solari He did not go on stage, his presence was felt through recorded interventions projected throughout the night. Greetings, virtually sung fragments and recorded messages from the former vocalist of Patricio Rey and his Redonditos de Ricota were captured and reproduced which the public celebrated with cheers and songs. “I wanted to play that I am with you,” he said in one of the passages played during the show.
The repertoire included classics expected by the stands and some new pieces that the band has been premiering in this year’s performance cycle; The musical group—made up of Gaspar Benegas and Baltasar Comotto, among others—held a show of just over three hours with brief breaks that the audience experienced as a true communion. The notes of the night highlighted the mix of in-person and virtual as a hallmark of these recent concerts.
The illness suffered by the singer is public: Solari confirmed that he suffers Parkinson’s disease and he did it on stage and in interviews since the mid-2010s. “I have Parkinson’s that is nipping at my heels,” he stated in 2016 in Tandil, a phrase that was recorded and that the media took up as a synthesis of his public diagnosis. At that time, he also announced his partial retirement from the stage.
Journalistic sources that review his medical situation detail that since then the musician followed multidisciplinary treatment, which includes medication for the disease, kinesiotherapy and physical routines; in addition to supportive therapies to mitigate stiffness and contractures. In recent interviews they record Solari’s own voice admitting that “the progression of Parkinson’s disease is noticeable,” but also that access to specialized treatment allowed him to maintain a certain mobility. “I have the possibility of doing a treatment that keeps me going,” he explained in an interview cited by La Nación.
The night in La Plata was, in short, the confirmation of a formula that the ricotero universe accepted and celebrated: the Fundamentalists as a face-to-face body that interprets and sets up the ritual, and the Indio as a presence mediated by audiovisual records and by their written and sound work. The public responded massively and turned the evening into another page of the cultural phenomenon that surrounds the singer, even with the shadow of his illness and the limitations it imposes.
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