Life and legacy of Totó la Momposina: the voice for Colombian folk music

By Paula Cabaleiro

Bogotá (EFE).- Gabriel García Márquez chose the vibrant voice of Totó la Momposina, whose passing was reported on Tuesday, to show the world the sound of the deep Colombian Caribbean.

For over six decades, with drums, gaitas (a Colombian flute), and bullerengues (a style of music and dance), she carried the ancestral music of her homeland to stages across the planet.

«Ancestral music is the one that gets to heaven,» Totó said to EFE in 2018 during an interview in Mompox, less than an hour from Talaigua, the Bolívar department town where she was born 85 years ago as Sonia Bazanta Vides. From there, she launched a mission to preserve and expand the Afro-indigenous and peasant sounds of the Colombian Caribbean.

The singer, a universal icon of Caribbean culture, died on Sunday at 85, leaving behind a career that transformed cumbia, bullerengue, mapalé, and porro into a global sonic heritage of Colombia.

Her children, Marco Vinicio, Angélica María, and Eurídice Salomé, confirmed the news in a post on the artist’s official Instagram account, stating she died «surrounded by her family in Celaya (Mexico).»

The Caribbean’s ember

Totó sang, danced, improvised, taught, and defended the Afro-indigenous oral and musical tradition of Colombia with the same intensity she used to reject sounds she considered hollow.

«I’m very transparent, you can’t fool me,» she said in that conversation with EFE, where she criticized reggaeton and other urban genres because, in her opinion, they were «an invention… to spoil the ears of the youth.»

Her rough, powerful voice, backed by drums, gaitas, and maracas, became one of Colombia’s most recognizable images abroad for decades.

She recorded iconic albums such as La Candela Viva, Pacantó, and La Bodega, and performed songs like ‘El Pescador’ (The Fisherman), ‘Yo Me Llamo Cumbia’ (My Name is Cumbia), and ‘Aguacero de Mayo’ (May Downpour), which became popular anthems.

But Totó also had an unparalleled stage presence. In 2018, at 78, she still took the stage with a vitality that surprised even her musicians.

«I’m giving a lesson,» she declared during a Mompox concert before dancing in front of the audience and taking a sip from a bottle: «It’s water, not rum,» she clarified, letting out one of her booming laughs.

Musical daughter and mother

Heiress to a multi-generational musical family tradition, Totó dedicated her life to preserving the peasant and Afro-descendant sounds of the Colombian Caribbean and proving they could resonate with audiences worldwide.

Her mother, Livia Vides, was a singer and dancer; her father, Daniel Bazanta, a percussionist; and her grandfather led a band in Magangué, a Bolívar town in the Magdalena River basin, like Mompox and Talaigua.

During the mid-20th-century violence, her family had to flee the Caribbean region to Bogotá, where the Bazanta Vides home became a gathering spot for musicians, students, and artists who found a way to keep their roots alive through music.

In the late 1970s, she traveled along the Magdalena River towns with anthropologist Gloria Triana to learn directly from traditional singers and drummers, an experience that forever shaped her understanding of music as cultural memory and a way of life.

International recognition

Totó’s international profile solidified in December 1982 when she was part of the artistic delegation that accompanied Gabriel García Márquez to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm, after the writer requested to celebrate the honor surrounded by cumbias and vallenatos.

After that trip, Totó lived for a time in Paris, where she studied dance history, choreography, and show organization at the Sorbonne University, an experience that further boosted her global recognition.

Since then, she took the music of the Colombian Caribbean to stages in the Americas, Europe, and Asia and collaborated with artists such as Carlos Vives, Gilberto Gil, and Calle 13, with whom she created the iconic track ‘Latinoamérica,’ which has become an anthem of resistance, identity, and dignity for millions of Latin Americans.

In 2013, she received the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for her career and her contribution to preserving folk music.

Although she became a global figure, she never abandoned her popular language or the defense of traditional music: «Supporting the folklore of Colombia and everywhere else» was her mission so that these sounds would endure «forever because those are points of reference.»

When asked how long she would continue singing, Totó answered with her characteristic simplicity: «Until God wishes.»

Her farewell to the stage came in 2022 at the Cordillera Festival in Bogotá, where she shared the platform with Adriana Lucía and Nidia Góngora in a concert that became a collective tribute to the woman who kept the Caribbean’s ember alive.

The artist’s remains will arrive at the National Capitol in Bogotá on May 27, to «celebrate her life and work» in a posthumous tribute with her body present, her children reported. EFE

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