Toto: This passionate Colombian singer shares stories and experiences from the heart with rhythm and verve.

PositionToto La Momposina - Interview - Biography

Almost no one calls her by her real name. "It's useful for signing into hotels, but that's about it," she told me when I caught up with her. It's true. It had been impossible to find her through the reception desk by asking for "Toto La Momposina," but that's the name Sonia Bazanta Vides goes by outside of the Colombian Pacific coast area where she grew up.

I finally found the charismatic singer seated in the hotel lobby. She's the kind of person who makes you forget about everything else. When she tousled her black curly hair and looked me in the eyes, everything else melted away--the time of day, the hustle and bustle of the hotel lobby, and the traffic noises from Latin America's largest capital city. Arm and arm with Toto, I took a trip to an island on the Magdalena River--the island of Mompox.

The name Toto was given to her by her father, who may have been imitating the first musical syllables of her childhood. But the name fit her to a tee. Years later, a Haitian cantadora of the same name told her that, in Africa, Toto means "a small woman with a big heart."

It's not an easy thing to be a cantadora. As keepers of the culture, they have to accompany their town's ceremonies and festivities and make sure verses and music are put to writing to preserve them for history. They also have to be able to heal with music. Toto says that cantadoras are, "people who have received a gift passed down from generation to generation, but it's not just the gift of singing. Cantadoras must also pass on information and be a healer. Some are midwives. Others work with plants."

Toto herself has been able to integrate her traditional heritage with formal studies in music, reinterpreting her culture to become a musical ambassador of her island.

Toto was born in the town of Talaigua, which was populated by the many members of her extended family. She grew up there listening to stories being told and retold: how drums communicated secret messages during times of revolution; how they sounded warnings when the river was flooding and people needed to flee to higher ground. She absorbed a life that revolved around farming, fishing, and fogones (campfire gatherings) and she saw how the cantadoras and drummers took over the church atrium during Christmas and other festivities.

The music of poor farmers and fishermen was not always held in high esteem in Colombia. It was the music of the blacks, the zambos, the mulattos, the indigenous. "The Island of Mompox is a...

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