Colombian folk singer Toto La Momposina, the "Queen of Cumbia," dies at 85

Toto La Momposina, the Colombian folk singer known worldwide as the Queen of Cumbia and among the most influential voices in Latin music, has died at 85. Her children announced her death in an Instagram post, saying she died Sunday, May 17, in Celaya, Mexico, surrounded by family, with a heart attack given as the cause. The Colombian Ministry of Culture confirmed the death Tuesday morning, writing on X that it was bidding farewell to "the eternal teacher who traveled the entire world to the rhythm of cumbias, porros, mapales and bullerengues."

Born Sonia Bazanta Vides in 1940 in the small Colombian town of Talaigua Nuevo, Toto La Momposina came from a family with Afro-Colombian and Indigenous roots; both of her parents were amateur musicians, and she began performing on stage at the age of six. She built her sound on the Afro-Indigenous rhythms of mapale, chalupa, porro and bullerengue, styles she studied firsthand by visiting musicians in villages along Colombia's Caribbean coast throughout her youth.

She later moved to the Colombian capital, Bogota, in the 1960s to join the city's music scene, performing as part of a group before relocating again to Paris in the 1980s to study music at the Sorbonne.

Her international profile grew after she accompanied the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Stockholm in 1982 to perform when he received the Nobel Prize in literature. She released her debut solo album, La Verdolaga, in 1983, and later worked with the English musician Peter Gabriel, releasing La Candela Viva on his Real World Records label in 1993, an album that became a formative text in the cumbia and bullerengue genres.

In 2011, Toto La Momposina won record of the year at the Latin Grammy Awards alongside Calle 13, Susana Baca and Maria Rita for the track "Latinoamerica," and in 2013 she received a Latin Grammy lifetime achievement award. She is survived by her children, Marco Vinicio, Angelica Maria and Euridice Salome Oyaga Bazanta, who wrote that their mother "carried the culture and memory of the Colombian people to the far corners of the world."