Montoya — Otun

While the internet’s universality means once-inaccessible traditional and indigenous styles of music across the planet can be appropriated, sampled, and commodified with ease; it also means they can be integrated and celebrated, reflecting humanity’s idiosyncrasies as well as our shared communality. Montoya, recently signed to ZZK Records, personifies the very best of this musical globalism. Montoya, who grew up in Colombia and now resides in Italy, entered music as a classically trained violinist. He’s keen to stress his gratitude for this adolescent education, not only in how it exposed whole new worlds of music, but permitted him travel places and sample different cultures from a young age, including playing at such renowned orchestra theaters as Gran Teatro de La Habana in Cuba and the Musikverein in Vienna. This classical upbringing naturally informed his inclusive, and methodically exacting, attitude to songwriting and production.