Totó la Momposina

Born Sonia Bazanta Vides in Talaigua Nuevo, in the Bolívar department of Colombia, Totó la Momposina has devoted her career to the traditional music of Colombia's Caribbean coast, between cumbia, bullerengue, porro and mapalé. Coming from a family of musicians and dancers, she has been singing and dancing since childhood, then deepens this repertoire by traveling between villages to learn local forms of singing and percussion, while also studying in Bogotá. Active under the name Totó la Momposina from the 1960s, she formed her own ensemble at the end of that decade and developed work focused on transmitting Afro-Indigenous and popular traditions, with a stage presence based on the dialogue between voice, dance and collective rhythms. After stints in Europe in the 1970s, Totó la Momposina settled for a time in Paris and then performed at WOMAD in the mid-1980s, before reaching a wider international audience in the 1990s. Her discography includes notably El Totó (1980), Cantadora (1983), Colombia - Totó La Momposina y sus tambores (1989), La Candela viva (1993), Carmelina (1995), Pacantó (2000), Gaita y tambores (2002), La Bodega (2010), El Asunto (2014) and Tambolero (2015). Totó la Momposina also participated in 2010 on Calle 13's track Latinoamérica, extending a career that remained linked to circulations between oral tradition, international stages and Colombian musical memory.