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The latest pop singer to take the orchestral challenge is Lido Pimienta, the Colombia-born, Canada-based singer-songwriter who won the Polaris prize for Canadian album of the year in 2017 for La Papessa. Its blend of Afro-Caribbean and electronic music continued on 2020’s Miss Colombia. But her new album takes an audacious turn into the world of conductors and classical musicians.
La Belleza, meaning “beauty”, unites Pimienta with the Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra. The results aren’t a pop-classical crossover like Peter Gabriel’s orchestral covers album Scratch My Back. Nor does it aim for the mushy middle-ground of neoclassical. Instead, it’s closer to the uncategorisable songs that Björk makes when she teams up with orchestras.
The album has been made by Pimienta with Owen Pallett, the Canadian composer and arranger (also a previous Polaris winner). An unusual set of inspirations lies behind its Spanish-language tracks. Pimienta cites as influences a Gregorian chant from the Catholic requiem mass, castrati singers and the soundtrack to a surreal classic from Czech cinema, 1970’s Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Added to these is the didactic intent to create, as she puts it, “something no one would ever expect from a Caribbean woman”.
Opening track “Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna)” riffs off the “Lux aeterna” title of the Gregorian chant. Pimienta sings wordless vocals, joined by a trumpet. Solemn tones from other instruments add an attractively grave accompaniment. “Ahora” has a grandly ritualistic sound featuring a choir of voices, stentorian strings and pounding kettle drums. It resembles a less sinister version of the occult processional music in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.
The film is a strikingly weird gothic fantasy about a 13-year-old girl entering adolescence. There is a link here to the perpetual boyhood inflicted on the castrati singers (who were castrated to keep their voices high pitched) that interest Pimienta, and also the Colombian celebration of the quinceañera, marking a girl’s transition towards womanhood. These ambitious connections simmer in the album, not fully formed.
The didactic side of the project is closer to the surface. “Mango” sets fiercely ululating folk vocals about the titular fruit against a delicately plucked harp. The juxtaposition goes from harsh to melodious as the song develops. “Busca la Luz” is a symphonic fanfare in which Pimienta hollers in praise of the Caribbean, a contemporary twist on the 19th-century tradition of the heroic tenor. It brings this concise but arresting album to a resonant end.
★★★★☆
‘La Belleza’ is released by Anti Records
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