Momentom Collective interviews Tamara Montenegro, one of the Music, Movement & Mask Residency’s top Guest Teachers for the entire 6 weeks of Artist Residency in Nicaragua at Maderas Village.
She is one of the most renowned Nicaraguan music producers and a deeply empowered feminine voice in the music industry. We dive deep into her essence, her secrets, her aspirations and her visions for the future through sound.
Who is Tamara Montenegro?
I am a truth seeker.
It’s not possible to identify as something. I am (we are) consciousness in human form, searching for ways to increase the vibrational frequency of my being.
I feel like a point in the intersection of humanity in gender and ethnicity, having different DNA lineages: European, Indigenous, Native, maybe African, and from the people of Nicaragua on my father’s side. I try to include all of that and their stories in the music I create.
I’ve been a musician since I was a child, playing numerous instruments. Also, an artist of performing arts. A butoh dancer. An experimental theater, yogi, dancer.
However, sound is by far my strongest drive. I became a music producer and DJ. I also did a Master’s degree in sound art. I then brought sound art to performance and cinema. It’s beautiful — it’s directly working with the human psyche. So, I love working for theater and films, and I’ve been creating soundtracks and sound design for a good decade now.
I find so much power in the study of vibrations and frequencies. Music is an organization of sounds and it’s a universal language. It can communicate things to the subconscious layers of the mind through neurotransmission stimulus, through generating changes in the wavelength patterns of our brains, and through allowing altered or heightened states of perception and presence.
Whoever the “I” is, it’s in constant transformation and change.
What is project NAOBA?
NAOBA is a future-primitive avatar from a very wise dimension to bring us information for a new healed humanity based on love and cooperation with life. S/he has no gender and embodies various consciousnesses. S/he has the mental power of a whole community of intelligent beings.
It speaks in many frequencies and languages at once. It is a superbeing. It speaks Music! NAOBA is a sonic jedi! Radiating supersonic waves of Love Consciousness.
NAOBA’s music brings back the primal sounds of percussions and voices of Latin American ceremonial voices. These sounds carry deep medicinal value in them as they are very connected to the cycles of Mother Earth and the intelligent cosmic codes.
What’s something not many people know about you?
Probably a lot of things (laughs). For the sake of this space: I love animals. I absolutely adore them. I don’t think people know that I’m vegan. I’m vegan for reasons of balancing the energies of peace in the world. I don’t agree with how food is produced massively and how much suffering is being generated through that industry.
Choosing the very source of our life force as food will definitely create massive ripples of positive situations.I practice Vipassana meditation. This is a thing in my life. This is the kind of meditation that brought the Buddha into enlightenment. It’s a silent, meditative practice that brings us into contact with the deep layers of ourselves. I’m really into that. And it really fuels the work that I do.
I don’t do music to entertain. Music that I make is a service to my community. It is a spiritual service, so clearing my channel is part of it.
What does circus mean to you?
Last time I was in residency with Momentom, I remembered when my grandma used to tell me she had a dream of running away with the circus. So, I felt like I was kind of fulfilling that wish of hers through myself.
Circus is wisdom. It’s accessing your inner child, who is so wise. Circus is joy, laughter, expansion of abilities and making life really light, which is by far the most fulfilling way to live.
How long do you meditate for?
For Vipassana I try to follow one to two hours a day. To make space in the mental realm.
And to be in a state of meditation is to be present and aware wherever one is, doing whatever one is doing. I also love doing dance yoga, it’s my favorite, I don’t really know if that is a term. I dance into meditation with whatever chance I get J it’s about increasing the vibration of joy in the body, isn’t it?I’m passionate about meditation because it really brings about permanent positive change as one cultivates the mind. There are hundreds of Vipassana meditation courses a year in many countries. It’s free to enroll in the 10-day silence introspective discipline. And having completed a course one can donate for the next person to attend. It is said that age-old path of Dhamma has no material value, it’s for soul ascension through the expansion of Love Consciousness. To start Vipassana one definitely needs to be guided. The mind is too wild. Ha ha.
Buddhist thought is completely parallel to the study of quantum physics. It observes the field of pure potentiality and the way that particles behave and live manifesting reality.
Through his meditation, the Buddha described the same thing, many centuries later, as one Nobel Prize winner Physicist who discovered it through a machine he designed.
They both found out the number of vibrations that the smallest particle, the Kalapa, has per second. A 1 followed by 22 zeros.
The only difference is that one discovered it through a machine, the other through first-hand experience. That pretty much sums it up.
What would you tell you 15-year-old self?
Make joy and self-love & respect the number one priority, always. It’s important for many 15 year-olds to hear this. Your passions matter and their fulfillment is important.
Also, to say, there are no mistakes. Just maintain an attitude of learning.
I’d say you are a gentle, gentle soul.
The development of the trust in your own self is progressive. And it will deepen and deepen.You’re perfect.
You’re in the right place.
What can we expect from you in residency in Nicaragua?
Enjoyable sonic explorations. Lots of curious things about sound and music.
Exploring what it means to be a music artist, your connection to your community and to nature by feelings life’s rhythms. The so called Sound Healing realm;)
To bring you closer to your passion and to develop an enjoyable process of making a discipline from your craft so as to really maintain a flowing rhythm of creation.
What is your purpose here? What are you here to do?
Big question. Easy answer is: to add energy to the Universal Plan of Love on Earth. Through the human body, alchemize the old wounds of past lives and lineage into Love and Beauty through embodying joy. Joy being a very high vibration state.
Also, I am here to create community and inspire consciousness expansion.
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to dive into this field of work?
Patience, persistence, discipline, addressing transforming negative belief systems: you are good enough, what you do is amazing. The old human paradigm doesn’t value art, yet art and creativity are the freedom and empowerment that this humanity needs to remember its own nature.
So, if you want to create music with meaning to change the vibrations of the self, people and places, it’s about becoming a conscious channel. Discipline polishes that channel.
Results come progressively. Keep focusing on that impulse that drives you to create the purest form of your musical expression. You will be surprised at how far you can go if you keep going consistently. So, consistency and patience.
Who are your guides?
The inner voice of the Body. Nature. Breath. Love. My ancestors. I really pray with them. They really show up.
Who inspires you in the music field?
Tom Kenyon channels the message of advanced conscious civilizations, the Hathors. Trippy.
Jonathan Goldman, the grandfather of sound healing, he speaks about intention. Any group of people who maintain purpose through their musical work inspires me. One can feel it in their sound.
Want to connect with Tamara and soak in her wisdom in person? She will be joining Momentom Collective as one of our featured guest teachers during our Nicaragua Residency at Maderas Village beginning March 1. Spots are quickly filling up for our reunion in paradise. Apply today to join our family and co-create along many other insanely talented and incredibly inspiring artists.
