Your Ronroco tour brings you back to Spain. Of the four cities you’ll be playing in (Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga and Cartagena), are there any you haven’t been to yet?

I know quite a bit about Spain. I’ve even driven from Madrid to Cádiz, passing through Granada, Málaga, Seville… I’ve been to Asturias, the Basque Country, Zaragoza, Barcelona and Cartagena, but never to Valencia, so I’m really looking forward to it. Also, years ago – I’ve lost contact with them – I had a connection with a Valencian band: Seguridad Social. I know about the region’s gastronomy, for example, but I’m going with a pretty blank slate because I want to be surprised.

Is it that same curiosity – which you associate with the search for identity – that has led you to explore so many genres and such different projects?

Yes, and it has to do with several things. One is related to the human side. Ever since I was very young – ever since I connected with music – I’ve been on a philosophical and spiritual search. I was raised Catholic (in fact, as a child I wanted to be a priest) but I had my first spiritual crisis at the age of 11. I’ve always had a spiritual quest and a voracious appetite for life, and that’s what happens to me with music, too. I love all music. My productions and the projects I’ve been involved in are enormously diverse. Obviously, Molotov is one thing and the Kronos Quartet is another. Tango legends, people over 70 – like my work with Café de los Maestros – are one thing, and a band that’s just starting out is another. Or Café Tacuba, Juanes, the films, a video game. I always ask myself, “Why not?” I’m aware of my limitations, but with what I have, in everything I’ve been involved in, I’ve always felt I could contribute something.

You even like to play instruments that you don’t know how to play…

If I am an artist – which is how I see myself – I don’t see myself as a guitarist or a film composer. I see myself as an artist who uses different forms and moments to express his creativity. If you give me an instrument I don’t know how to play, I’ll break it and record the sound, or take it apart. But I can usually get a sound out of it, and that puts me in a situation of risk and forces me to be minimalist. It helps me with my use of silence, which I use a lot. It also gives me something childlike, a sense of play. I really like that in English you say, “play an instrument”. That play, like “playing with something”, is what happens to me when I’m faced with an instrument I’m not familiar with. An example is Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film. Babel takes place in three different parts of the world, and when it came to composing the music, I wanted a kind of world music, but one that wasn’t from any specific place. I found a voice in the oud, a predecessor of the lute – and therefore of the guitar – which comes from the Arab world. The same goes for genres. In Bajofondo, for example, we never set out to say that we were creating the new tango. We made contemporary music from the Río de la Plata region, so candombe, murga, tango and milonga had to be there, but also rock, electronic music, hip-hop, jazz and classical music.

Among all the instruments, the ronroco has been a constant in your music. How did you come to it?

The ronroco belongs to the charango family, but it has a sound and a quality that make it very different. I’d always played the charango, and one day I saw a ronroco in a music shop in Buenos Aires. I took it out and played it, and I felt a very deep connection; it touched my spirit. I’d grown up watching Jaime Torres – one of the greatest charanguistas in history – on television, and when he began to gain recognition and win Grammys, I was invited to produce a compilation about him, an incredible opportunity to meet the maestro. I listened to more than 400 of his recordings and put together an album called Amauta. I had lots of recordings of me playing the ronroco that I’d been collecting over the years, and one day I gave them to him and said, “Jaime, this is something some friends of mine are doing”. He called me three days later to say, “You’re the one playing here; you have to release this, you have to make an album.” And so I worked for six more months and released Ronroco, an album that condenses 13 years of my life.

Was that the album that opened the doors of Hollywood for you?

Yes. I released it while I was in the middle of setting up my own label, Surco, focused on alternative rock music. The album had nothing to do with that context, and I wasn’t even going to have time to tour to promote it. But it came out and started being played on the radio, and one day I arrived at the studio and they told me: “Michael Mann’s office called. He wants to use a track in The Insider, the film with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.” The scene was what we call a feature cue, when the music takes over the entire screen and there’s no dialogue; it was a turning point in the film. At the same time, a mutual friend of Alejandro González Iñárritu told me about him – she had played him the Ronroco album – and said, “He’s making his first film and you have to work together”. Alejandro came to Los Angeles to show us Amores Perros. I was with Aníbal, my partner and engineer. We looked at each other and said, “We have to make this film.”

And your career took off.

That’s where the Ronroco journey and my film career began. Alejandro then said to me, “Do you know Walter Salles?” I said, “Yes, Central Station – I love that film.” “He’s making a film about Guevara, before he became Che, and you’re Argentine. You should meet him.” So I met Walter, we clicked, I showed him my music, and that’s how I did The Motorcycle Diaries, which brought my first major recognition, as the film won Best Foreign Film and I won the BAFTA for Best Music. Then, at Sundance, the US distribution deal was signed with Focus, and there I was connected with Ang Lee, and I met her two months later in New York. In three weeks, I composed all the music for Brokeback Mountain.

Twenty-five years after releasing this life-changing album, you’re now paying tribute to it with a tour.

I needed to, because I had never played it live. I’d played a few pieces in concerts, but never the whole thing in one mood. In addition, there are many things around it, such as releasing it on vinyl (180g vinyl for audiophiles), creating a digital version of the ronroco with Spitfire, and even a perfume for those moments of introspection. We placed the ronroco I travelled the world with in a vacuum chamber and captured all the essences of the instrument’s woods in a cartridge, and with them we ventured into the world of incense. Each bottle contains a small quartz crystal inside, because you can imbue quartz with intention and energy. It will be released to the public at the end of the year. I also invented an instrument that is a mix between an electric guitar and a ronroco, which I called a ‘guitarroco’, and the final step was to take this music live. Last year we played ten cities, and this year we’re doing 20.

How do you feel now that you’re approaching it again and giving it new life on stage?

It has always been a very personal experience, but now I have a group with me, and that gives it a different energy. The show is also designed in a very special way to take the audience to that place. I try to convey to people what I feel when I play the ronroco, and I think, in some way, they feel it as well. Music also has a therapeutic and healing power.