At 82, of which more than 60 have been on stage, Totó la Momposina is retiring. After his last concert organized on Saturday September 24 at the Cordillera festival in Bogotá, the Colombian and international press hailed a “music legend”as it is called The Country America. And to attract official tributes. “Totó made those who could not sing sing and those who could not dance dance”says the Minister of Culture, Patricia Ariza, quoted by the Colombian daily The viewer. “She made us feel deep Colombia, Colombianness, who we are.”
A music of truth
Pushed to retire by health problems, the octogenarian “comes down from the stage but rises to Olympus, after decades of struggling to raise Caribbean music and culture to the top”claps again The viewer. His efforts have paid off across borders. “Few artists can claim to have brought their country’s culture to international stages for more than six decades of career”can we read on the website of the television channel Colombia signal.
Thanks to the power of her voice, Totó la Momposina gave new impetus to traditional Caribbean music such as cumbia, porro and mapalé. LikeThe fisherman or my name is cumbiahis songs evoke the lives of ordinary people. “It’s a music of truth, which does not lie”she said in 2012 to The country.
“It’s like the drum, which speaks to everyone without us knowing why. It’s because we heard it for the first time in our mother’s womb, tam-tam, tam-tam.”
Sonia Bazanta Vides has been dubbed “geek” for that is the sound she chirped as a child, beating a drum. “Momposina”, refers to the place where she grew up, Santa Cruz de Mompox, in northern Colombia. His father Daniel was a percussionist and his mother Liba a singer and dancer, which “forged his artistic character from an early age”indicates the site of Colombia sign.
Forced into exile by the violence that suffocated the region, the Bazanta Vides landed in Bogotá. An arrival made difficult by latent racism in the capital, reports Time. During this period, the family transformed their house into a cultural centre. While Daniel worked as a cobbler, Liba signed up her children for the music TV show coastal watercolors.
Studies in France
But only Totó then studied music at the conservatory of the National University of Colombia, recalls this Colombian right-wing daily. Having founded her own group, the singer accompanied the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez in Sweden, to give a concert during the presentation of his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
Now known outside his country, Totó la Momposina studied music at La Sorbonne, France. This is where she recorded her first album, Colombiain 1984. Nine years later, the British composer Peter Gabriel signed with her the album the living candle (The lit candle). This disc “secured him a massive international following”rembobine The country.
Compared to “pure fire” and at “Even Sun” by his friend Juan Guillermo Ospina in the columns of the Colombian magazine Change, Totó the Momposina in the summer “a lit candle for those who had the pleasure and the privilege of seeing her sing and dance for her last concert”is moved the Colombian news site the empty chair. But, as the singer pointed out to The country, “the real star is the music, it is she who shines.” She will continue to shine thanks to her son’s band, Los tambores de Totó.