“Why did Waldo de los Rios
commit suicide
For what reasons did he expressly fall into oblivion after his death
” Those are the questions that journalist Miguel Fernandez tries to answer in his book Challenging Oblivion, which recovers the figure of the Argentine composer 43 years after his death. De los Ríos (1934-1977), based in Spain since 1962 and whom Stanley Kubrick said was “a very talented composer”, was a musical reference of his time and a well-known character, but there are many unknowns that surrounded his last years of life.
Gather all the information to prepare this biographyIt has not been an easy job, but rather the opposite, as if it were a “board game where you move forward one square and go back two”, points out the journalist (Granada, 1962). It has taken “about three years to collect the information.” “He was jumping from one place to another depending on what he was finding because in this country little information is kept from those years and then many of his friends have died or are older,” he explains.
Born in Buenos Aires, into a musical family (son of the famous singer Martha de los Ríos), De los Ríos studied at the capital’s conservatory of music and performing arts and, at just 14 years old, obtained the title of teacher. He married the actress and writer Isabel Pisano, with whom he moved to Spain in 1962, and whereHe began to work as an arranger and conductor. A few years later he shot himself twice in the head . It was March 28, 1977 and he was 42 years old.
“Why did De los Rios commit suicide
” That question is asked by everyone. He was a prestigious, famous musician , he had it all … So, why did he do it

To answer this question, the author of the book places the reader in the last months of the composer’s life. He describes De los Rios as exhausted and in the grip of depression. The slimming diets, the repression of his homosexuality, the fear of oblivion, thinking that his era was over or the pressure from his mother. Problems that, added to the intake of sleeping pills and alcohol, led him to take his own life with a shotgun.
The book, which begins with the judicial diligence of her death, tries to clarify what happened that night in 1977, since on his day it was speculated that it could have been a murder. ” Sensationalism fell on his figure after his death. It was a real media spectacle. He talked, he invented, he manipulated, he did everything, Waldo was a bit of a victim of his death,” says the writer. For that reason, Fernandez decided to start the report with the official diligence. “I have worked in a rigorous and truthful wayabout what happened. At no time have I sought sensationalism, on the contrary, I wanted to reconstruct an event, a time and a figure that was important for the country and the memory of many people”, he clarifies.
The title chosen for the biography is not a coincidence either. De los Ríos He was obsessed with oblivion and kept repeating constantly that he was defying oblivion.”He took photos, he recorded himself on video, he kept his music and he cut out everything that came out in the newspapers about him, he was afraid that oblivion would cover him up completely, so I kept repeating that phrase over and over again.” Reading the book, whether you know De los Rios or not, it’s easy to wonder what he didn’t do as a musician or in what well-known song of the time he didn’t play. intervened.”– Fernandez admits – he liked to be everywhere, from TV sets to movie soundtracks.”
He was a prodigy, or as Fernandez likes to call him, a ” musical all -rounder .” He worked with orchestras, performed before the queen of England, put soundtracks to movies and series by Chicho Ibanez Serrador -The residence or Stories to keep you awake- and told Kubrick that he was not going to compose the music for A Clockwork Orange. “I think Waldo was the first composer global, the same thing could do you a soundtrack, that the arrangement of a song, that the head of a television program or delve into Argentine and Spanish folklore. He did everything and almost for everyone, he had a multitude of records, that’s why he reached so many people”,
Although, without a doubt, his consecration came with the Sinfonias album, in particular with Mozart ‘s 40th Symphony , and he hit the boom with the arrangement of the fourth movement of Beethoven ‘s 9th Symphony in D minor , known as Hymn to Joy , that this 2020 turns 50 years old. “This song, sung by Miguel Rios , became number one on many world music charts – declares the author – in fact, now with the pandemic, many are on balconies that have rescued this song”.
Great, prodigy, precocious, repressed, obsessive, tender. That was Waldo de los Rios, the man who, as the author says, ” could be the Mozart of the 20th century .” A brilliant talent who had the misfortune to die young.

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