Totó la Momposina, Colombian Folk Singer and Voice of Cumbia, Dies at 85

Totó la Momposina, the singer who took Colombia’s coastal rhythms from village fiestas to concert halls worldwide, has died at 85. The cause was a heart attack.

Born Sonia Bazanta Vides in the river village of Talaigua, she grew up inside the music of the Mompós region. Her father played drums. Her mother was a singer and dancer. By age six, she was performing. As a teenager, she traveled Colombia studying the art of the cantadoras, the women who sang while grinding corn or washing clothes by the river. She absorbed the textures of cumbia, mapalé, bullerengue, and other styles the country’s urban centers largely ignored.

When she formed her own group in 1967 as Totó la Momposina y Sus Tambores, these folk idioms were out of fashion at home. She worked parties and local gatherings, slowly building a repertoire that treated the music not as preservation but as living culture. A 1974 booking at Radio City Music Hall, through a coffee growers’ sponsorship, gave a glimpse of what was possible beyond Colombia.

Her trajectory shifted in 1979. Left-wing associations put her life at risk, and a tip-off sent her to Paris with no money and no French. She sang on the streets, a handful of mime artists helping her get by. The music held.

The breakthrough came in 1993 with La Candela Viva, released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label. That record, built around voice and percussion, announced her to a global audience as the queen of cumbia. She toured without pause, returning to Colombia as an emblem of pride rather than a niche figure. “We have a wonderful country,” she once said. “But a nation without music would be a people without identity.”