Totó La Momposina, Voice of Colombia’s Caribbean Traditions, Dies at 85

Totó La Momposina died Tuesday, May 19, in Mexico. She was 85. Colombia’s Ministry of Culture and her family confirmed the news. Her son Marcio Vinicio told Blu Radio that she “died in peace” after months in palliative care following a prolonged struggle with aphasia and related neurocognitive conditions.

Born Sonia Bazanta Vides in 1940 in Talaigua Nuevo, she built a life’s work from the rhythms and oral traditions of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. She began singing at local celebrations in the 1950s and formed her ensemble, Sus Tambores, in the late 1960s. That group became the vehicle for a sound that reached across continents, turning cumbia and bullerengue into lived memory for audiences in Europe and Latin America.

Her international presence expanded in 1982 when she accompanied Gabriel García Márquez to the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm. A debut album, La Verdolaga, arrived in 1983. A decade later, while living in France, she connected with Peter Gabriel and released La Candela Viva on his label, a recording that includes the enduring song “Curura.” That album solidified her reputation as a preservationist who never let tradition feel static.

In 2011 she earned Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the Latin Grammys as a featured voice on Calle 13’s “Latinoamérica.” A Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Recording Academy followed in 2013. Her 2014 album El Asunto picked up Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations, further confirmation of a career that already carried deep symbolic weight.

Samples and interpolations brought her voice into unexpected spaces. Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Timbaland, Major Lazer, and J Balvin all pulled from her catalog. The uses, often without direct collaboration, underscored how her phrasing and tone had become a kind of folk memory themselves.

She retired from performing in 2022, revealing that neurocognitive illness had affected her speech and memory. Her last public appearance was at Colombia’s Festival Cordillera. The title “Queen of Cumbia” stuck, but her legacy is less about monarchy than about transmission: six decades of making sure the songs and rhythms of the Magdalena River basin would not disappear.