Totó la Momposina was a Colombian singer, dancer, and folklorist, born Sonia Bazanta Vides on August 1, 1940, in Talaigua Nuevo, Bolívar, Colombia. Raised in a family of musicians from the Mompox region, she began performing in the 1960s with her family ensemble and built her work around the Caribbean Colombian traditions of cumbia, bullerengue, porro, mapalé, chalupa, sexteto, and tambora. After representing Colombian culture at the 1982 Nobel Prize ceremony for Gabriel García Márquez, she spent time in Paris, studied music and dance, and recorded her first album with Totó La Momposina y Sus Tambores in the mid-1980s. Her international breakthrough came with La Candela Viva, released by Real World Records in 1993 after sessions connected to Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD/Real World circle. Songs such as “El Pescador,” “La Candela Viva,” “Dame la Mano Juancho,” “Curura,” and “La Verdolaga” helped present the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous roots of Caribbean Colombian music to a global audience. She followed with albums including Carmelina, Pacantó, Gaitas y Tambores, La Bodega, and El Asunto, and collaborated with artists such as Calle 13, Lila Downs, Celso Piña, and Jorge Celedón. Her appearance on Calle 13’s “Latinoamérica” won Latin Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 2011, and she received the Latin Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. In 2015, she revisited the La Candela Viva sessions on Tambolero, and in 2022 her family announced her retirement from the stage. Later archival and heritage releases included Totó La Momposina y Danzas Patrimoniales in 2023 and the remastered EP Mono Colorao in 2025. Totó la Momposina died in Mexico in May 2026 at the age of 85.
