Colombian-Canadian musician Lido Pimienta, the genre-defying artist who won Canada's Polaris prize with 2016's La Papessa, speaks to the Guardian about her outspoken political stance as Colombia elects a new right-wing president. The winning candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, has favoured fracking and closer ties to the US, once spoke of wanting to "disembowel" the left, and drew praise from Donald Trump; Pimienta fears leftwing artists like her could become targets under his rule. Undeterred, the 39-year-old maintains that using her voice to resist the exploitation of her country and its people matters more than a smooth career.

The interview also charts her artistic evolution and personal history. Following 2025's La Belleza, which fused classical orchestration with dembow to protest against being pigeonholed as "world music", her new album Caribenya turns to the dancefloor, inspired partly by Colombian joy-as-resistance and, unexpectedly, by Enya's indifference to trends and fame ("Enya mode"). Pimienta recounts growing up as a bullied Black girl of Indigenous Wayuu heritage in Barranquilla, relocating to London, Ontario in her late teens to escape gang violence, and developing a critique of capitalism and colonialism — encapsulated in her view that "being a billionaire is so tacky".