ClarOscuro is a vocal ensemble mostly made up of singers and instrumentalists from various Spanish-speaking countries who share not only a common language, but also similar experiences of arrival and adaptation to life in Germany. It is precisely from these biographical and cultural experiences that their first programme, “Música Mestiza – Encounter between the Old and the New World,” emerged, proposing a historical and musical journey through the origins of Latin American music.

The programme explores the encounter—often violent—between Indigenous, Spanish, and African cultures from the sixteenth century onwards, a process that gave rise to one of the richest musical traditions in the world. During the colonial period, Spanish composers incorporated Indigenous languages, African rhythms, and local melodies into European forms such as the villancico, creating a hybrid musical language whose traces remain vividly present in Latin American popular and art music to this day.

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, an extensive and remarkable repertoire developed in cultural centres such as Mexico, Lima, Sucre, and Córdoba. Composers such as Gaspar Fernández, Torrejón y Velasco, and García de Zéspedes fused elements from three continents into works of striking vitality and profound expressive power.

ClarOscuro presents a carefully curated selection of these historical pieces and links them with songs from contemporary popular and oral traditions, revealing how these early musical mestizajes continue to form the foundation of what we now recognise as the distinctive sound of Latin America.