Totó la Momposina

Flights & Sounds of Summer

August 15, 2009, 8:00 PM
Free Admission, $8 Parking (Map)

Mixing infectious Caribbean rhythms with lush romantic melodies and great vocal style, Totó la Momposina and her 10-piece band are frequent headline attractions at music festivals worldwide but they rarely perform in California. Her Great Park appearance is one of only four engagements on the West Coast.

One of the most well-traveled voices in world music, La Momposina was a sensation at several of the Peter Gabriel-organized WOMAD festivals, and has made herself at home on stages from Japan to Slovenia. Others have heard her on the Divine Divas compilation or on the soundtracks to John Sayles’ Men with Guns and the Disney film Jungle to Jungle.

Despite its global reach, la Momposina’s music comes from a very particular place and culture: the town of Talaigua on the island of Mompos, around which the Magdalena River flows on its way from the Andes to the sea in the country of Colombia. The roots of the local sound began hundreds of years ago, when the music of the island’s indigenous tribes merged with that of escaped African slaves who’d arrived from Cuba.

La Momposina comes from five generations of Mompos musicians, and is herself known as a “cantadora,” which in her community means not just to be a singer, and also to be one who gives advice, preserves traditions and who draws villagers together on social occasions. Whether singing at a hometown dance, a European opera house or, now, the Orange County Great Park, when she applies her lush voice to a romantic ballad or a roiling cumbia rhythm, you scarcely need a mojito to get in the mood to dance the night away. On her rare West Coast concert tour, she performs with a crack 10-piece band of Colombian musicians, most of whom have been working with her for many years. Artist Website