Sonia Bazanta Vides, known artistically as Totó La Momposina, has died this Tuesday, May 19, at the age of 85. The news was confirmed by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, which bid farewell to the artist as an essential figure in the country's cultural history.
Totó La Momposina was one of the great ambassadors of traditional Colombian music. Her voice carried the sounds of the Caribbean to the world: cumbia, porro, bullerengue, mapalé, tambora, and rhythms born from the cross between the African, indigenous, and mestizo roots of Colombia.
Her death closes one of the most important careers in contemporary Latin American culture: more than six decades of career, international stages, and a constant defense of the musical tradition of the Colombian Caribbean coast. Señal Colombia recalls that her international career made her one of the artists who did the most to project Colombian musical heritage outside the country.
The voice of cumbia, bullerengue, and the Colombian Caribbean
Totó La Momposina was not just a singer. She was a popular music researcher, a guardian of Caribbean rhythms, and an artist who turned oral tradition into living heritage.
Born in Talaigua Nuevo, in Bolívar, she grew up linked to a family of musicians and cultural practitioners. From a very young age, she traveled through towns in the Colombian Caribbean to learn traditional songs, dances, instruments, and rhythms. That search marked her entire work and turned her music into a kind of sound archive of Colombia.
Songs like La Candela Viva, Yo me llamo cumbia, El pescador, or Prende la vela are part of her most recognizable legacy. Her voice was celebration, memory, and root: a way of singing that did not sound like a museum, but like the street, the river, the drum, and the people.
She retired from the stage in 2022 for health reasons
Totó La Momposina had announced her retirement from the stage in 2022, after a career of more than six decades. Her circle explained at the time that she was leaving public performances for health reasons, after a life dedicated to traditional Colombian music.
As her son Marcio Vinicio told Blu Radio, the artist died peacefully and had been receiving palliative care for months. The family had explained that her physical condition had deteriorated in recent months, after having reduced her public activity.
An artist recognized in Colombia and around the world
Totó La Momposina took traditional Colombian music to international stages and was recognized as one of the great figures of Latin American folklore.
One of the most symbolic moments of her career came in 1982, when she sang during the events linked to Gabriel García Márquez's Nobel Prize in Literature in Sweden, a scene that remained forever associated with the international projection of Colombian culture.
She also received awards such as the Womex Award in 2006, the Life and Work Award from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia in 2011, and the Latin Grammy for Musical Excellence in 2013, according to Señal Colombia.
Colombia bids farewell to an unrepeatable voice
The death of Totó La Momposina leaves Colombia without one of its most powerful and recognizable voices. Her legacy does not belong only to music: it belongs to the cultural memory of a country that found in her a way to sing its origin, its mixtures, and its joy.
Her fire is extinguished in her body, but it remains lit in the music. In every tambora, in every cumbia, and on every stage where the Colombian Caribbean sounds again, Totó will continue to be present.