Gustavo A. Santaolalla (born 19 August 1951, in El Palomar, Argentina) is a two time Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, two time BAFTA, Grammy Award- and Latin Grammy Award-winning Argentine musician, film composer and producer.

Santaolalla's professional music career began in 1967, when he co-founded the group Arco Iris, an Argentine band that pioneered the fusion of rock and Latin American folk as part of 'rock nacional'. The band adopted the lifestyle of a yogic commune guided by former model Danais Wynnycka (known as Dana) and her partner, musician Ara Tokatlian. The band had a few hits, such as Mañanas Campestres ("Country Mornings"), and made inroads into different forms of expression (notably a ballet piece for Oscar Aráiz), but Santaolalla felt constricted by the strict requirements of Dana's teachings, which forbid meat, alcohol and drugs, and mandated abstinence from sex. He left the group in 1975.

A year later, he assembled Soluna, in which he played alongside teenage pianist and singer Alejandro Lerner and his then-girlfriend Monica Campins. Together they recorded just one album (Energia Natural, 1977). Santaolalla left for Los Angeles, where he adopted a rock and roll sound and made the rounds with his band Wet Picnic, together with ex-Crucis member Anibal Kerpel. He briefly returned to Argentina in 1981, to produce Leon Gieco's Pensar en Nada and record his first solo album.