It has been five years since the GRAMMY-nominated and Polaris Prize-winning artist Lido Pimienta debuted her breakout album, Miss Colombia, and today, she reemerges with La Belleza, a transcendent new album created in conversation with European classical music and her personal life. An iconoclast who creates music and fine art drawn from her experience as a Caribbean woman from Colombia, Lido Pimienta’s new offering marks a defining moment in her already remarkable career. “The thought of making ‘classical music’ never occurred to me before, but making experimental electronica on Miss Colombia was not premeditated either,” Pimienta says. “All I create is a natural evolution of my curiosity and stubbornness.”
Released in 2020, Miss Colombia fuses lush electronica synths with pop, resulting in an album that is as sonically captivating as it is culturally powerful. Nominated for a 2021 GRAMMY award in the Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album Category, the title was inspired by the 2015 Miss Universe mishap in which Steve Harvey mistakenly crowned Miss Colombia, instead of Miss Philippines. It caused Pimienta to reflect on the anti-blackness she’d experienced growing up. In a review broadcast on All Things Considered, NPR described the album as “a complicated ode to a country and a culture that still struggles to celebrate its black and Indigenous women.”
When March of 2020 hit and Pimienta was supposed to leave for tour in promotion of Miss Colombia, she instead found a studio space outside of Toronto and redirected her creative energy into the writing process. “La Belleza means The Beauty in Spanish, and I held on to that word fiercely—it carries so much meaning but so much emotional weight,” Pimienta explained. “Mainstream beauty has damaged my self-esteem, colorism has poisoned my people, and fatphobia refuses to go away. La Belleza was watching nature regenerate itself when we weren’t consuming as much. La Belleza was able to see and live near family again, realizing how much we had taken for granted, how fragile life was, how quickly it could be taken by a virus.”
Working with Ableton and her MIDI controller and alongside producer Owen Pallett—a fellow Polaris Prize winner and composer and arranger for the Sampha, Lana Del Rey, and the GRAMMY-nominated Her soundtrack, among others—Pimienta felt herself repeatedly drawn to the Luboš Fišer soundtrack for the film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Despite not being classically trained, Pimienta was excited by how this music felt like the opposite of Miss Colombia. “I didn’t come from a classically trained background, so this was insanely ambitious—but I also didn’t overthink it. It was COVID, and for the first time in a long time, I had time—time to learn.”
Just as she began this classical experimentation, choreographer Andrea Miller reached out to Pimienta about composing a piece of music for the New York City Ballet, becoming the first all-female team to do so. Additionally, Pimienta was the first woman of color to create a piece for the Ballet. When asked by The New York Times about seeing her music accompanying Miller’s choreography, Pimienta said: “It feels potent, it feels extreme — I feel an abundance. When I see the dance responding to the rhythm, the sound, the melody, it’s very emotional for me.”
