Ana Tijoux is the Chilean hip-hop protester. Her cover letter could well be what media outlets like The Rolling Stones who chose her as the best rapper in Spanish,The New York Times who points to her as the Latin American response to Lauryn Hill, or magazines like Newsweek who ranks her as the most important Latin American rapper on the international scene. Ana Tijoux was born in Lille in 1977. Her parents went into exile during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, which has left a mark on her career, marked by a special sensitivity to political and social issues. Her music dialogues to the sound of hip hop, fused. A feminist and activist in her lyrics,she denounces social and cultural deficiencies. In favor of women’s rights and against gender violence, in 2014 she highlighted in her album “Vengo” the song “Antipatriarca”. They frequently participate in campaigns against inequality and oppression in the world. Tijoux is committed to defending women’s rights and has denounced gender violence and inequality. Also, the inequality faced by artists in the world of cinema, or singers.
“We realize that in every place we visit, in every news item we see, violence against women is reiterated, multiplied and totally normalized (…) deep down you are being asked with whom you abandon your children when you go on tour, and many times it is women journalists who ask you that, so I wonder: when are the daddy men who leave their children when they go on tour going to ask this question?
“We have to be young, we have to be attractive, we have to be intelligent, but they hope we don’t talk too much, and sing very beautifully and hopefully see ourselves very sexy above the stage (…) one as music questions oneself and says: ‘chucha, what is my capacity for movement here’, because finally if one says that one has critical thinking, one is still confronted daily with this, from advertising, from atrophied bodies”.
Ana is a global artist. About to publish her first book of poetry and her fifth studio album, she dares to go through all the creative processes: she composes, writes and arranges both her own themes and those she develops for different audiovisual projects, from films to documentaries. She has also put herself in front of the camera in films such as La Isla de los Pingüinos or a Chilean series of upcoming premieres and feminist theme called La Jauría. Ana released her first book ‘Sacar la voz’ wich was top sales on Chile. In January 2024 Ana released her long-awaited album ‘VIDA’ after 10 years of silence.
CAREER
Her recognition in Latin America began in the late 90’s as a femcee of the hip-hop group Makiza, consolidating her worth and success with her second solo album “1977”.
His first solo album, titled Kaos, produced by Nicolás Carrasco (Foex) of the Potoco Discos label, together with guitarist and producer Cristóbal Pérez (Pera Prezz), would be released in 2007 under the Oveja Negra label, founded by the SCD, with his first single “Despabílate! In this album she fuses funk, soul and other black rhythms, giving himself the freedom to compose sad, cheerful, dynamic and melodic songs with the desire to show a whole range of emotions.
With her 1977 album (2009), Ana Tijoux showed her skills through sophisticated rhythms and lyrics, wrapped in a voice with a touch of jazz.The album, named for being her year of birth, paints a picture of her childhood in France and pays tribute to the Chilean hip hop that inspired her in the early ’90s. That same year Radiohead leader Thom Yorke recommended his followers listen to the artist’s 1977 song, which raised Tijoux’s popularity in Europe.
In March 2014 she released her fourth solo album, Vengo, musically produced by Andrés Celis, mixing different rhythms and cultures. The artist releases a set of 17 songs, ranging from tinku to the most contentious hip hop, with instrumental nuances full of political manifestos, contingency themes, social and cultural deficiencies.The initial track “Vengo”, which gives the plaque its name; continues with the aforementioned “Somos Sur”, together with the Palestinian femcee Shadia Mansour; “Antipatriarca”, produced by Cristóbal Pérez (Pera Prezz), dedicated to women’s liberation, women’s autonomy and the vindication of their rights and the denunciation against violence against women; and “Somos Todos Erroristas” which, following the line of collaborations, has the contribution of Hordatoj. In the song “Creo en Ti”, also produced by guitarist Cristobal Perez, has the company of Juanito Ayala, with a cheerful lyrics, positive, full of awareness and hope, nuanced with sounds of charangos, quenas and redobles nortinos, demonstrating the versatility of styles combined in the work, Tijoux manages to impress a new local musical environment, as well as opening the door to new exponents in search of consecration. It is with this album that he manages to captivate the ears of great international exponents such as Iggy Pop,who incorporated in the playlist of his BBC radio program the song “Somos Sur”, appealing to “this girl if she has balls”, or as the Japanese composer and activist Ryuichi Sakamoto who shared on his Facebook wall the song “Antipatriarch” and “No TPP” (2013), pointing out that there are no borders for music.
VIDA
The finale of “Vida,” the new album by the Chilean songwriter Ana Tijoux, is “Fin del Mundo” (“The End of the World”). She sings and raps, in Spanish, about dire expectations: war, pollution, drought, a collision with a comet. But as a technotinged disco beat rises around her, she cheerfully declares, “If the end of the world is coming, let’s dance naked together.” “Vida” (“Life”) is Tijoux’s fifth studio album and her first since 2014. She chose its title pointedly. “I have a very good friend who talks to me about how life is the best vengeance against death,” she said in a video interview from her apartment in Barcelona, where she relocated during the pandemic and recorded the album. “That makes so much sense, to have vitality and energy. I insist that it doesn’t mean that we live in a superficial place. It doesn’t mean that it’s not political. We are living in a bizarre moment. And there is nothing more political than defending life and defending humanity.” In the album’s first single, “Niñx” (“Little Girl”), Tijoux urges her daughter, and all young women, to find strength in joy: “Life scares them,” she sings. “Do not lose the laughter.”
Tijoux, 46, found an international audience with her second solo album, “1977,” which was released in 2010. It was named after the year she was born, in France, to Chilean parents who had gone into exile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Living in Paris, Tijoux was drawn to the hip-hop she heard while visiting immigrant families from Africa with her mother, a social worker; she, too, felt like an outsider. “Even if I couldn’t understand the lyrics,” she said, “that kind of music, that culture, changed our life.” On “Vida,” Tijoux salutes 50 years of hip-hop in “Tú Sae’” (“Y’know”), joined by Plug 1 from De La Soul and Talib Kweli, who observes, “The root of community is unity.” Soon after the Pinochet regime ended in 1990, Tijoux returned to Chile with her parents. In the late 1990s, she established herself as a performer, rapping with the Chilean hip-hop group Makiza before going solo. The single “1977” multiplied her audience worldwide. It’s a quick-tongued, matter-of-factly autobiographical rap, backed by a vintage-sounding bolero, about growing up and finding her voice in hip-hop; it has been streamed tens of millions of times. In the United States, it was boosted by prominent placement in a 2011 episode of “Breaking Bad.” On “1977” and the albums that followed, Tijoux glided easily between rapping and singing. With her 2011 album, “La Bala” (“The Bullet”), she began collaborating with the producer and multi-instrumentalist Andrés Celis. He helped broaden her music across eras and regions, drawing on R&B, reggae, rock, electronica and multiple folk traditions along with far-reaching hip-hop samples. Tijoux has often written about politics, feminism, resistance, solidarity and the predations of capitalism: songs like “Somos Sur” (“We Are the South”), a modal stomp about the silencing, strength and fearlessness of Africa and Latin America, which features the Palestinian rapper, Shadia Mansour; and “Antipatriarca” (“Anti-Patriarca”), a feminist manifesto set to Andean flutes, guitars and drums.
While she continued touring, she was also raising two children — Luciano, now 18, and Emiliana, 10 — and working on assorted collaborations. One was “Lightning Over Mexico” with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and the Bloody Beetroots, which had Tijoux rapping angrily about murdered Mexican student activists. Another was “Almacén de Datos” (“Data Warehouse”), a reggaeton song with the Argentine songwriter Sara Hebe that pushes back on treating music as a commodity in the attention economy: “For a businessman, everything is a market,” Tijoux taunts. Between albums, events spurred Tijoux to write singles. They included “Pa’ Qué” (“Why”), a brisk salsa song, with the Puerto Rican rapper PJ Sin Suela, that mocked politicians downplaying Covid-19; “Rebelión de Octubre” (“October Rebellion”), a ballad that crescendos into an anthem praising protests in Chile and worldwide; and the hard-nosed rap “Antifa Dance.” In a statement with “Antifa Dance,” Tijoux wrote: “In the face of authoritarianism, imposition, discrimination, the implacable hatred of the other, we return to the word Art with all its force. That art onslaught with music, colors, that art that dances in response, as an organized movement of beautiful rebellion.”
Some of the songs on “Vida” directly extend Tijoux’s sociopolitical concerns. “Oyeme” (“Hear Me”) is a stark, percussive rap and chanted melody that Tijoux wrote after seeing reports that Britain was housing migrant asylum seekers on a barge. “I always have news on in the morning,” Tijoux said. “And it was terrible and absurd once again. I was thinking about the parallel between that and the slave ships.” Another song, the somber “Busco Mi Nombre” (“I Search for My Name”), is about people who were arrested and “disappeared” by dictatorships in Argentina and Chile; it’s prefaced by spoken words from the grandmother of one Argentine victim. Tijoux wrote and sings it with iLe, the Puerto Rican songwriter who got her start with the activist hip-hop group Calle 13. They met more than a decade ago, sharing the stage at a concert in Brooklyn. “Years ago, there weren’t so many female political figures,” iLe said via video from Puerto Rico. “It’s a difficult challenge to speak through songs, about things that you might be afraid to say. And it’s nice to feel that there are women who are transcending their own fears and just writing and making songs about what they feel they need to talk about. It’s risky, but it comes from an honest place. And I think Ana has done that from the beginning.” Much of “Vida” is purposefully upbeat — recognizing struggles and losses but looking beyond them. Tijoux wrote “Tania” in memory of her sister, who died of cancer in 2019; it starts as an elegy but turns into a celebration. “She was super funny, she had a lot of vitality,” Tijoux said. “So to make just a sad song would not be fair.” And in “Bailando Sola Aquí” (“Dancing Alone Here”), an Afrobeats track topped with Latin percussion, Tijoux sings, “I’m tired of this sadness, crying a river for you,” then declares, “I decided to be happy.”
PRIZES
She has dozens of nominations for various awards such as the MTV, 40 Principales, Indie Music Awards and has eight Grammy nominations (both Latin and Anglo), making her the Chilean woman with the most nominations for these awards. Winner of the 2012 Altazor Awards, with “Sacar la voz” feat. Jorge Drexler in the “Best Urban Song” category, in 2015 she won first place in the categories of Best Artist of the Year, Best Album of the Year (Vengo), Best Song of the Year (Vengo), and Best Urban Music Artist of the Pulsar Awards, with her fourth solo album “Vengo”. In 2011, she was nominated for the Grammy Awards with “1977” in the category “Best Latin/ urban/alternative rock album”, which would be repeated in 2013 for “La Bala” and in 2015 with “Vengo” in the category “Best Latin/urban/alternative rock album”. Likewise, in the Latin Grammy Awards, she has been nominated with “La Bala” for “Best Urban Music Album” (2012) and with “Sacar la voz” (2013). In 2014, she won a Latin Grammy with “Universos Paralelos” with Jorge Drexler in the “Song of the Year” category and, in 2014, she was nominated with “Vengo” in the “Best Urban Song” category. Considered one of the top MCs in Latin America, Ana Tijoux has been nominated to the MTV Video Music Awards Latin America as “Best New Artist”, and “Best Urban Artist”. In 2023 she was awarded a Harry Belafonte Fellowship by The Action Lab NYC for her commitment to social activism in music.
