Colombian Singer Totó la Momposina Dies at Age 85

Totó la Momposina, one of the most celebrated musicians in Colombian history, has died aged 85. Her three children announced her death from a heart attack on Instagram. “Totó was a woman who, with her voice and extraordinary dedication, carried the culture and memory of the Colombian people to the far corners of the world,” they added.

She was born Sonia Bazanta Vides in 1940 in the small town of Talaigua Nuevo in northern Colombia. After the family moved to Bogotá, she took on the stage name Totó la Momposina. By the late 1960s she was performing in her own band, Totó La Momposina y Sus Tambores.

She was invited to perform a concert residency at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 1974. In 1979 she discovered she was blacklisted in Colombia for leftwing political leanings and became a refugee, fleeing to France.

She joined the cultural delegation accompanying Gabriel García Márquez as he accepted the Nobel prize for literature in 1982. Her recording career began the following year with debut album Cantadora. Through a partnership with Peter Gabriel’s label Real World Records she found a broader international audience, beginning with 1993’s La Candela Viva.

In 2013 she was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Latin Grammys. In 2016 she was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Colombian president Gustavo Petro described her as “my dear friend and a luminary of Colombian Caribbean art and culture … may she soar high to the stars”.