Tembembe Ensamble Continuo

The Tembembe Ensamble Continuo’s vision is to seek out, recreate, and share what intimately connects Baroque music with traditional music, both Mexican-specific and Latin American. The artists do this by breaking down historical and imaginary boundaries that have come to separate these worlds over time, thus bringing to bare new possibilities of appreciation, comprehension, and truly novel interpretation of this flourishing music.

Tembembe has tasked itself with bringing together the music of the Hispanic Baroque guitar and the music of Mexican and Latin American contemporary culture. The group explores the similarities between the instruments and the practices of each of these traditions, presenting all aspects of performance including music, song, and dance that bring alive the festive spirits of both the Hispanic music of the 17th century and contemporary traditional works.

Members of Tembembe are graduates of the National University (UNAM) in Mexico City, as well as having completed their studies in other music institutions in the US, Mexico, Colombia, and France. Today they teach at the UNAM and the Centro Ollin Yoliztli. The artists organize workshops aimed at reconstructing and interpreting traditional instruments, as well as jam sessions in the Morelos state communities. The ensemble has been featured at numerous venues in Mexico, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Tembembe Ensamble Continuo has recorded for UDC (Mexico), Sony, BMG, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (Germany), and AliaVox (Spain).