Lido Pimienta – Marea
This Friday the trailblazing and GRAMMY nominated artist Lido Pimienta releases Caribenya, her fourth studio album.
While firmly rooted in the Latin American and Caribbean anti-colonial concerns Pimienta has explored throughout her career, it is an album that relies on the joyous resistance of the dancefloor and the moments of escape we indulge in clubs and beaches and our bedrooms as the world burns. Today she shares “Marea”, a song from the album in which Pimienta tackles the deeply human themes of desire, love, and money through the lens of a young woman who must hustle and sell herself to provide for her family.
“Marea” nods to several types of cultural colonialism, from the gentrification of island lands by rich outsiders to Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita”, one of the first instances of an Anglo artist tapping into so-called Latin imagery. In this song and throughout her oeuvre, Pimienta continues to embody a champion for those who don’t have the voice to decry their situation.
Caribenya is a playful portmanteau of the word “Caribe” and “Enya”, a nod to the mysterious Irish singer Pimienta is a fan of. The esoteric figure of Enya has loomed over Pimienta, who listens to her music to concentrate while writing. Often compared to Björk and Natalia Lafourcade in part due to her scope, generation, and ambition of her work, Pimienta prefers to align herself with the legendarily reclusive ambient diva before anyone else.
Caribenya syncretizes all of Pimienta’s influences at a peak moment in her artistry. It’s creative ties to the lush classical symphonies of her 2025 orchestral album La Belleza and the sonic blueprint of electro-cumbia rebajada on her 2020 breakout record Miss Colombia are married on Caribenya with ambient melodies, pop sensibility, and dembow riddims grounded in a personal politics. Created with a slew of collaborators including Mexican cumbia collective Turbo Sonidero and Arrabalero of Grupo Jejeje, the songs refuse to be displaced.
“Someone told me that making a classical album was gonna be impossible for me and I did it, an “impossible-only-Europeans-could-ever-do-this album”; ‘Caribenya’ is the counterpart where I got to be less cerebral and have more fun,” she says of this new music. “With my friends, I’m more collaborative, because I usually work alone; it has a sense of joy and collaboration that is very Caribbean. It’s like ‘come over and hang. You don’t need to set up an appointment; you can just knock on the door.’”
TOUR DATES
Sept 15 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos
Sept 16 – Portland, OR @ Wonderland Ballroom
Sept 18 – San Francisco, CA @ Bimbos 365
Sept 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Ford Theatre
Sept 25 – Mexico City, Mexico @ Pitchfork CDMX
Oct 29 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ ALICE
Oct 30 – Oslo, Norway @ Oslo World Fest
11/2 – Barcelona, Spain @ Upload
11/3 – Madrid, Spain @ Villanos
11/5 – London, UK @ Pitchfork at Village Underground
11/7 – Paris, France @ Cafe de la Danse
11/8 – Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique
11/9 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Bitterzoet
11/10 – Berlin, Germany @ Bi Nuu
#lidopimienta