Tamara Montenegro

This artist’s path is unique as it is varied. Part musician, part performer, part artistic director, part filmmaker and part sound researcher, Tamara Montenegro is a multidimensional artist whose underlying passion is driven by psychoacoustics, or the study of how sound affects human response. She is in part responsible for the raising of the electronic music scene in her native Nicaragua, a land with a hard history of war, politics and natural disasters. She brought on house music at the time when Nicaragua had never witness electronic music culture back in the early 2000s. Tamara’s musical trajectory begins early in life, but in the last 12 years her focus has been immersed in the electronic music world in a serious way. As a fully independent music artist, her efforts have seen her perform on stages, basements, warehouses, galleries, streets and fields over numerous years alongside many amazing artists and artistic curations infusing her music-making approach with countless influences and nuances. Within this path, her musical works have found home on a few labels but also on documentary film work, choreographies, theater, installations and fashion. Also, within the realms of sound researcher, she has ventured outside of music and dedicated a time to explore other disciplines of sound such as ecoacoustics and bioacoustics fieldwork. Her most recent approach to her musical productions and live mixing takes from tribal and world-music as a pivotal force in her sound. This has brought her to sign with Lump Records and Tropical Twista and most recently launching her very own Heart in Nature independent label. Her sets express multicultural universes nestled with electronic synthesis. For years Tamara’s take on djing has been a sort of exploration of massive catharsis and emphasizes on the ritualistic aspect of the party. She expresses that to her the art of djing becomes an act of urban shamanism. As a songwriter and poet, she maintains a regular production of works under a secret alias, thus protecting her most intimate emotion-infused electro-pop songs. Since 2017, Tamara works as label manager and music curator of U.K-based The Roots Project Records, a regenerative music label turned social development platform for original indigenous music from tribes around the world. The label pairs up international producers with indigenous artists to create versions of ancient ceremonial music. Recent releases include works by AkizzBeatz, Dj, Narrative, Sibu, Waggles; and is now currently working with Mano Negra, Baru, Umoja, Spy from Cairo amongst many others.