Ana Tijoux unravels language barriers with common threads
With attention around the globe and a plug from Thom Yorke, she's the one to watch in 2010
By Camille Ikalina Robles
Published: May 28th, 2010 | 12:00am
Ana Tijoux’s love affair with hip-hop began at an early age, and in a very unlikely place: on the streets of Lille, France. Tijoux's mother was French, and though her father was Chilean, the couple remained in Europe during a period of political exile under Pinochet’s dictatorship in the early 1970s. And so it was at 10 years old, when Tijoux would accompany her social worker mother to work on days off from school, that her romance with hip-hop began. Hanging with the street kids, Tijoux was immediately drawn to the music of artists like N.W.A. and Public Enemy. She was inspired by the energy and force of the music even though she couldn’t understand the words. Instead, Tijoux tried out various modes of art like dancing and singing as ways to express this new creative energy she felt growing inside her; that is, until a French Realism poetry class finally led her to connect her passion for words with music.
Speed ahead to just over 20 years later, and Tijoux has just completed her first U.S. tour in support of her latest album, 1977 (Nacional). The title, inspired by the year Tijoux was born, explores common threads of the human experience. “I like to talk about everything—freedom, abstract ideas, music, love, childhood, politics, relationships—anything that moves me,” Tijoux says during a recent interview. It's the same qualities she admires most about the artists she loves, from Jimi Hendrix to the Roots and Me'Shell NdegéOcello, to the classical French and Latin American music of her youth.
Though Tijoux raps in both French and Spanish, she notes a special connection with the language from her father's country. Tijoux moved to Chile in her late teens where she immersed herself in the underground hip-hop scene in Santiago—a scene that has roots in revolution and liberalism and inspired her own songs that are rife with commentary about the social and political issues we face as citizens of the world.
Being a woman in the predominately male-dominated world of hip-hop hasn’t deterred Tijoux’s musical aspirations, either. According to the MC, the support and love she gets from her fans in Chile defies gender lines. “No one seems to pay attention to the fact that I'm a woman,” she says. “They only see me as a rapper and musician.”
And apparently a storyteller. During a performance at the La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, California in March, Tijoux’s hour-and-a-half set was chock full of personal interactions with her audience in French, Spanish, and English. Amid laughter, as the diverse audience helped Tijoux with her English when she couldn’t find the right words, one thing was clear: words, passion, and the energy and force behind music are sometimes all you need to understand everything.
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Ana Tijoux MySpace page
Nacional Records
Issue #36
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