Timbaland, Jay-Z and Major Lazer sampled her work, and she received a lifetime achievement award from the Latin Grammys in 2013.

Colombia is mourning the death of legendary singer and dancer Totó la Momposina, the artist who carried the rhythms of the Caribbean coast to audiences around the world. 

Totó’s death was disclosed in a statement by Colombia’s Ministry of Culture today, which described her as “the eternal master”, praising her decades-long contribution to Cumbia, Porro, Mapalé and Bullerengue music.

Her family confirmed that Totó died on Sunday, May 17, in Celaya, Mexico at age 85, after years battling neurocognitive health complications.

Born Sonia Bazanta Vides in 1940 in Talaigua Nuevo, Bolívar, near the historic river town of Mompox, Totó devoted her life to preserving and promoting traditional Caribbean music rooted in African, Indigenous and Spanish influences.

For more than six decades, Totó became the voice of Colombia’s Caribbean soul. Raised in a musical family — her father was a drummer and her mother a singer and dancer — she began performing at an early age before later studying folklore and music in Bogotá, Paris and Cuba. 

In 1982, she accompanied Gabriel García Márquez to Stockholm during his Nobel Prize ceremony, where she performed Colombian Caribbean music before international dignitaries — a moment that became part of the country’s cultural history.

Her international breakthrough came with the 1993 album La Candela Viva, released through Peter Gabriel’s Real World label, which introduced global audiences to the song “El Pescador” and to authentic Colombian rhythms.

Over the years, Totó collaborated with and influenced artists across genres, while her music was sampled by international musicians including Jay-Z and Major Lazer. Her song “Latinoamérica” alongside Calle 13 won her two Latin Grammy Awards in 2011. She officially retired from performing in 2022 due to health complications.

Totó received numerous honors throughout her career, including the Womex Award in 2006, Colombia’s Life and Work Award in 2011, and the Latin Grammy Award for Musical Excellence in 2013.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro honored the singer in a post on X today, calling her “an exalted figure of Colombian Caribbean art and culture,” adding, “may she fly high to the stars.” 

Her family also announced that a tribute honoring the singer-songwriter will be held on May 27 at the National Capitol in Bogotá, as the country prepares to bid farewell to one of the most influential voices in its cultural history.

The post Totó la Momposina, Colombia’s treasured Caribbean singer, dies at 85 appeared first on The Bogotá Post.

When One Hundred Years of Solitude author Gabriel García Márquez accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm in 1982, Colombia arrived with him — not only in prose, but in rhythm, drumbeat and dance.

Among the delegation of more than 200 Colombian musicians and artists who traveled to Sweden was a barefoot singer from the banks of the Magdalena River whose voice would stop the banquet hall in its tracks. Her name was Sonia Bazanta Vides, though the world would come to know her simply as Totó La Momposina.

“It was as if everyone from Macondo had come down the staircase of Stockholm City Hall,” The City Paper wrote in a 2016 profile titled Colombia’s Queen of Cumbia. Totó, wrapped in the musical traditions of Colombia’s Caribbean interior, danced across the marble floors singing cumbia and bullerengue before royalty and diplomats.

After the performance, she recalled, a palace official approached with a message from the Queen of Sweden: “Never stop singing.” And for more than six decades, she never did.

On Tuesday, Colombia awoke to the news that Totó La Momposina had died at age 85 in Mexico, where she had been living in recent years after retiring from music in 2022 due to declining health. Colombia’s Ministry of Culture confirmed her death, calling her “eterna Totó,” the eternal voice who elevated and transformed the traditional music of the Caribbean coast.

Her son, Marcio Vinicio, told Colombian media that the singer had spent recent months in palliative care. President Gustavo Petro described her as an “illustrious figure of Colombian Caribbean art and culture.” Opposition leader and presidential candidate Paloma Valencia highlighted that Totó la Momposina “took our music to the world and taught us to feel pride in what is ours. Her legacy is the nation’s heritage”.

Born in 1940 in Talaigua Nuevo, on the Magdalena River near Santa Cruz de Mompox, Totó emerged from a lineage where music was inherited as naturally as language itself. Her father was a shoemaker and drummer; her mother sang, danced and played the mandola. By age six, Totó was already performing onstage.

But it was the villages and wetlands of Colombia’s Caribbean coast that became her true conservatory.

As a teenager, she traveled from town to town absorbing rhythms born from the collision of African, Indigenous and Spanish traditions. She studied the cantadoras — women who sang while washing clothes in the river, grinding corn or tending cassava fields — and transformed those oral traditions into a musical language that would eventually reach audiences around the globe.

“The love for music is passed on through your genes,” she told The City Paper in 2016. “I never lost my sense of belonging.”

That belonging was rooted in Mompós, the island town from which her stage name derived. For centuries, the Magdalena River served as Colombia’s great cultural artery, carrying not only gold and commerce inland from the Caribbean coast, but rhythms: cumbia, mapalé, chalupa, porro and bullerengue.

Totó would become their most recognizable ambassador.

After her family fled violence during Colombia’s mid-century civil conflict and settled in Bogotá, her mother transformed their home into a sanctuary for Caribbean music. Musicians such as Lucho Bermúdez passed through the house, and Totó soon formed her own group in the 1960s, performing at neighborhood parties and on television.

In the 1980s, she moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne University, immersing herself in music history, choreography and stage production while singing in metro stations, restaurants and street corners throughout the French capital.

France would become a second home — and the launching pad for international recognition.

Her breakthrough arrived when Peter Gabriel heard her perform and invited her to record at his Real World studio near Bath, England. The resulting 1993 album, La Candela Viva, introduced global audiences to songs like El Pescador and cemented her place on the world music stage.

She would go on to perform across Europe, Latin America and the United States, reportedly appearing more than 300 times at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Her influence stretched far beyond folk music circles. Artists including Manu Chao and Timbaland sampled her work, while she lent vocals to Latinoamérica.

Though often called “The Queen of Cumbia” or “The Voice of Colombia,” Totó resisted celebrity detached from tradition. For her, the stage remained sacred. “The stage is a temple,” she told The City Paper. “You must respect it. I give my heart to the audience. It is a commitment.”

Even in her seventies, she continued performing with fierce energy, appearing at events tied to Colombia’s peace process and receiving honors including the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and France’s highest Order of Arts and Letters, the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres.

Her final public years coincided with a renewed appreciation among Colombians for their own musical roots — roots Totó had spent a lifetime defending.

In September 2022, she announced her retirement due to neurocognitive complications. Yet her songs endured as living memory: the voice of fishermen on the Magdalena, of Afro-Colombian drumming circles, of women singing beside the riverbanks of the Caribbean coast.

“The day that I cease to be nervous before going on stage, I will retire,” she once said. “Because at that point music will have become mechanical.”

For Totó La Momposina, music never became mechanical. It remained alive, ceremonial, ancestral — a fire carried across generations. And perhaps that is why the Queen of Sweden’s words still resonate today: Never stop singing.