Season 3, Episode 7:  “We Make the Boom Bop" ft Ana Tijoux

Narration: The best way to explain how much we moved in my life is simple statistics. By early adulthood, I had lived in 12 cities, on 3 continents, at 22 different addresses. For example, our years in Brooklyn crossed  three different neighborhoods, we spent time in two cities in Iowa. I changed schools in 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade. After all this, I even coined a term for that feeling that you get right before you leave a place, when all the good things you experienced there flood back to you all at once. I called it “the sweetness,” and as a kid I knew the sweetness well.

Why all the moving? At first we were refugees, attempting to rebuild our lives, then we moved for my parents jobs, the very last choices were very much my own. So it’s no surprise that I became enraptured by the question, if home is not a place, then what is home? Over the years, I’ve written songs about it, I’ve fantasized about it. I have chased it. 

When I meet artists who also wrestle with this question and make beauty from its depths, it’s like finding cousins I never knew I had. Inevitably, I reach for these artists and a million questions spill out. So how did you do it? How did you find home? 

Ana Tijoux is a Chilean rapper who got her start in Chile's hip hop scene in the 1990s. For her, music has always been home. But after decades of building shelter out of sound, Ana lost the keys of her creativity, the ones that had allowed her to get in the front door. She had to find them once again and reinvent exactly what music-as-home meant to her. I caught up with her one evening in Barcelona, and Ana told me exactly how she made her way back.  

My name is Meklit, and this is Movement, music and migration, remixed. 

Ana: So my name is Ana Tijoux. I'm a musician. I'm a mother and I think that's the best way that I could present myself. 

Meklit: I'm also a musician and mother.

Ana: Okay. Welcome to my, that's, you've come from my gang. The gang of the mother musician.

Meklit: The mother musicians, the multitaskers, the holders of so much.

Ana: Exactly.

Narration: The day Ana’s daughter was born there was no question that she’d be named Emilia after Ana’s mother.  Ana’s mother is a well-known sociologist named Maria Emilia Tijoux, who specializes in migration and racism in Chile. Back when she was a college student in the late 1960s, both she and Ana's father were involved in Chile's Revolutionary Left Movement, known as MIR (Meer). 

In 1970, Salvador Allende became the first democratically-elected Marxist leader in Latin American history. But things quickly took a violent turn. On September 11th, 1973, Chile was forced into dictatorship when a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet seized power. Those who opposed Pinochet’s regime faced suppression and many were punished by death. Ana’s parents were among those targeted with violence and jail time before finally escaping to France with the help of a revolutionary priest named Father Dubois. 

In 1977, Ana was born in the city of Lille in Northern France. She was raised by her mother and step-father, Roberto, who she considers her father. Roberto was imprisoned and exiled from Chile around the same time as her mother for his political beliefs. The two of them united on how to raise Ana intentionally.

Ana:  In my home, they never teach me to say, don't ask that. It's about adults. Never. So, they put me, they make me part of those reflection obviously with a language for kids, 

Narration: Ever since she was a child, Ana wanted to be just like her parents. She loved hearing her mother sing and play guitar and listening to the passionate conversations between her parents and their friends. She was fascinated by the stories of their youth, imagining herself going on their adventures. Though they didn’t disclose the worst of their time in Chile, her parents spoke of injustice openly and encouraged Ana to ask questions. They wanted her to develop a critical mind and to think for herself. 

Ana: I was doing question and about Latin America or about Africa or what, what is going on there and why, why there is a war, why they're always talking about a president, what is going on?

Narration: And alongside those conversations, the question of Chile lingered in Ana’s head. 

Ana:  When I was young, like France were, was home in some point. Even if I had my, I had my French passport and whatever, but I was feeling this curiosity about that country that, that I didn't really know that was Chile.

Narration: In France, the concept of home was never clear cut for Ana. Yes, she had a French passport, but she didn’t look like the other French kids. In Lille, she remembers she was always the smallest one in class and stood out among her classmates with their porcelain white skin. 

What Ana knew of the country her parents came from, she learned indirectly, through the embroidered landscapes they hung on their walls at home and the records they played: Chilean folk musicians Victor Jara and Quilapayún who sang of revolution. Language was her closest source to Chile. She spoke Spanish, complete with Chilean slang, as fluently as French. 

Ana:  Language create reality and culture. The words that we talk is the way also that we exchange culture.That's perhaps my first, one of my first way to approach a culture where from a country where I was not born.

Narration: In 1983, when Ana was six years old, she visited Chile for the first time. The country was still under dictatorship, so her parents could not travel with her, but they arranged for her to fly on her own to meet her relatives. When Ana arrived in Chile, she was greeted by a huge group of people. All of a sudden her family grew from just her mother and step-father to include grandparents, aunts, uncles, and tons of cousins. Everyone welcomed her with open arms and tears in their eyes.     

On the car ride from the airport, when she saw the Andes mountains for the first time they overwhelmed her. Everything in Chile was exciting and completely different from what she knew in France. She tasted new flavors, like fresh Chilean bread with avocado, and her family taught her traditional songs, laughing at how she pronounced the letter “R” when she sang. 

Ana: It took time for me to understand the country, to understand the food, everything, the laugh. 

Narration: All the attention from her family made Ana feel important, but at the same time, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being an outsider. Her roots were in Chile, yet she wasn’t born there. She felt both estranged from and tethered to this place she’d only just started to understand in her body. 

When Ana returned to France, the feeling of being an outsider only intensified. Then came another change of setting: a move to Paris. 

Ana:  My mother, at that point was a social worker. So she was working in, I don't know what is the name in English, but the person that work with young people and have a culture center, something like from the neighborhood.

Narration: Ana was still a child when her family relocated to Paris. Her mother provided social services for youth from immigrant and refugee families and had to travel all over the city to meet her clients in their neighborhoods. Some days, she didn’t have anyone to babysit Ana while she did her rounds, so she’d bring her along. One of Ana’s strongest memories is of playing in the streets with the neighborhood kids while loud music filled the air. She watched the kids dance and freestyle to the beat. She was fascinated by the world she’d entered into.   

Ana: like wow, this is amazing. This world full of color and energy and music and creativity. And a lot of those young people were, well, they were listen hiphop. And I would say that I fell in love immediately with, with that culture.

Narration:  Ana realized she had something in common with these kids. They too were born in France to parents from other countries. And they’d all found hip hop.  

Ana: I asked myself so much like how hip hop arrives with so much energy in France? Like, you know, and because it's full of migration. 

Meklit: Yes. 

Ana: People from everywhere like Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, Chile or whatever, or whatever, whatever. All of us born in France or not born in France, and we see all that culture coming from North America and we say, yes. That's our country. Because even if we were born here, I don't, we don't know really if we come from here or we come from there, but we come from this, this hip hop. And so I think that's automatically begun to be a flag. A flag and a land, a free land of so many people, I guess.

Meklit: Free land of so many people.

Narration: In the streets of Paris, Ana got her first taste of what had always eluded her: a sense of belonging. And then, came another move: Santiago, Chile’s capital city. In the early 1990s, Ana’s family was finally able to return to Chile because the people ousted Pinochet from power in 1988 and the country transitioned into a democracy. 

Ana was now a teenager and through a scholarship, she enrolled in a French international highschool in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Santiago. But Ana was anything but happy there. At school, she was bullied for her indigenous features and her family’s social status. Santiago’s neighborhoods were segregated. Ana saw housekeepers going into their own separate entrances where they worked. And beyond the neighborhood, racism and classism were apparent in the white-washed media. This was not the revolutionary Chile she’d imagined of her parents’ youth.

Then, one winter day, Ana got to know another part of Chile. It hadn’t been long since the move from France when her mother took her to visit a family friend who lived on the outskirts of town. 

Ana: A friend of my mother took me to a neighborhood, a very poor place, but everybody, everything was organized.

Narration: People took care of each other in this neighborhood in a way Ana hadn’t seen before. In this community, people shared what they had and created resource sharing systems, like food distribution, and they organized popular education classes.

Although Ana had grown up with stories of grassroots organizing from her family and their friends, it wasn't until she was in this neighborhood that she started to see what it was like for herself. She felt welcomed there.

Ana: So I went to the house of my friend’s, that she's a friend until today, and I enter in a house where the floor were tierra. 

Narration: This friend's home in Chile had a dirt floor. And like many homes in the neighborhood, it was built with whatever was available and accessible.    

Ana: So I never saw that kind of house where the cold were entering from the outside, from the inside.

Narration: She remembers on that cold day, everyone gathered inside the house around a kerosene stove, what's called an estufa, to keep warm.

Ana: We were all around that estufa because it was hot and laughing a lot. And then they put upon that like, peels of orange to make good smells.

Narration: With the scent of orange peel in the air, the conversation and laughter just flowed. Material resources were scarce, but what stood out to Ana most was how much creativity came from necessity. And that spirit extended into the entire community.

Ana: And I say, wow, this is amazing. Like how people have the capacity of organize so much having almost nothing, what quantity of dignity there is here. 

Meklit: Organized how?

Ana: With food, for example. Like, because there is something, I don't know how you say in English, which name is ollas comunes, when people make food for a lot of people in the neighborhood.

Narration: Ollas comunes are like community kitchens, and they're typically organized by the community members themselves so that everyone can eat during times of crisis or collective need. Alongside the ollas comunes in her friend’s community, Ana saw a whole web of organizing in action.

Ana: I saw that people doing classes like popular education in the hood. And I fall in love with the community of that neighborhood. 

Narration: By her senior year of high school, Ana had found her place with a group of local graffiti artists. One of their favorite spots to hang out was a park in Santiago where a group of rappers would freestyle. One day, Ana’s friends dared her to jump into the cypher, and she went for it. 

Ana had never rapped before, but she had a natural way with words. The more seasoned rappers were impressed and welcomed her back for regular cyphers. As she refined her style, it wasn’t long before she joined a group called Makiza, who were well known in the underground hip hop scene for their politically-conscious lyrics. Ana was the only woman in the group, and relatively new on the scene, but what she did have in common with the other members was that they all had ties to different parts of the globe, Europe, North America and Africa. They too had found a home in hip hop. 

Ana: I always thought that hip hop is the land of the people with no land.

Meklit: Mm. Beautiful. I'm thinking, also, about how there's so much hip hop in what you just said. So much of hip hop is about like the narrative from the ground up. Literally, like you might think of it in one way. No. Uh-uh, no. We're—it's the, it's like, what is it when you look close? The people who have been misunderstood or mislabeled or—and oppressed, you know, and then the narrative that comes from the ground up. 

Ana: Exacto. I think the subculture make grow new type of culture all the time. And the history show it all the time. That's when the magic arrive. Like when something crazy like a bump of creativity. There is something magical and unique. And it's perfect because it's an answer to the violence. It’s the answer to the poverty. It’s an answer to the oppression. It’s an answer full of dignity and creativity. How people can be so creative in the middle of nowhere, having nothing? 

Narration: When Makiza self-released their first project, Vida Salvaje, in 1998, Ana didn’t think anyone would listen. But to her surprise, the album caught fire in Chile’s underground scene. The country was still reeling from the trauma of the dictatorship, and young Chileans were hungry for lyrics that mirrored their anger towards a regime forced on them as children. Record labels paid attention too. By 1999, Makiza signed to Sony and had an instant hit with their single “La rosa de los vientos”, a song about exile and not belonging to the country where you were born. 

In the 90s, Makiza was at the top of the charts in Chile. But Ana was uncomfortable with the quick rise to fame. She fled the spotlight in 2000, retreating to Paris to leave music behind. After three quiet years, a return to Chile, and after her first child was born, she began rapping again. This time solo, and released her debut album Kaos in 2007. 

Narration: Her 2010 follow-up 1977, a raw, bilingual self-portrait, gained international traction, landing her at South By Southwest.

From there, Ana's audience exploded with shoutouts from Iggy Pop and Thom Yorke, Grammy nominations for her next two albums, La Bala and Vengo, and a powerful reemergence as a political voice rooted in her revolutionary lineage.

Ana:  Everything is political. I always say this, and perhaps I'm super boring saying this, but they wanted to teach us to put political stuff away from our life. And that's for a reason also. And I think it's very convenient. Perhaps we become more dangerous when we have more the capacity to analisar, or to have an opinion about what is going on around the world.

Narration: At the height of Ana’s fame, it felt like the world was at an inflection point. La Bala came out around the time of Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and student-led movements in Chile. Like she’d done with Makiza, Ana offered her powerful critiques of patriarchy, state violence and colonialism, rapping about environmental justice, indigenous sovereignty and the rights of women. But like it played out in the 90s, Ana’s politics were at odds with a profit-driven music industry. And with more visibility, came more expectation.

Ana:  It was complicated for me at least to make music for all that expectation. Too much expectation. I don't know if I can fit to all the expectation. I don't want to be there. I did never ask about that. And, but we all live that. All of us. It's not about, only about music, I think is, the way that we are building, oh, now you have the here and, and now you get to be in another step and another step and be bigger and bigger and stronger and beautiful and younger. And it's like.

Narration: She felt like the very passion that had led her to music was eclipsed by stress. 

Ana: I don't know where to go, creativity. I don't know. Because I was feeling lost. 

Narration:  Since she was a child, hip hop had been her one constant, a home she could take with her wherever she went. But now, she was exhausted. 

Ana: And at the same time, I had two kids and I never stopped my music, making music since I was 18, so with all that self expectation, plus the external expectation is a bump of stress and cortisol. 

Narration:  Ana found herself at a turning point: She could either force herself to make an album that wasn’t coming naturally, or accept where she was. 

Ana: I was like, okay, I've got, I will take a time, a nap, creative nap. Why not? 

Narration: Nine years went by and Ana simply lived her life working at her own pace and raising her kids. 

Ana: So for me those nine year were quick. I never, I never even didn't feel it. It was super fast. Like, everything goes so fast. I was like, whoa, nine year. Oh wow.

Narration: For some time, she felt frustrated and disappointed that an album wasn’t materializing over the years, but those feelings began to ease when she found herself writing again. This time not an album, but an autobiography. Ana found that writing her book was completely different than creating songs. She describes writing lyrics as writing for her external voice, finding the right words for a catchy chorus.

Writing her book called for her internal voice. It allowed her to go deeper within herself. Memories she thought had been lost in time came back to her in vivid detail, like her first visit to Chile at six, and everyday life in France. Writing was therapeutic and liberating. It unearthed something for her, and it gave her a place to process some of her deepest griefs, including the death of her sister, Tania. 

A year after her memoir came out, she released her fifth studio album, Vida, her most joyful, and celebratory project yet.  She describes Vida as her homage to the people she’s loved who have died. After Vida, Ana is embracing the freedom and play that drew her to hip hop in the first place alongside her friend and longtime producer, Hordatoj, whose real name is Eduardo.  

Ana: And I say, you know what, Eduardo, let's do hip hop and have fun. Like, you know what? This industry, I don't understand nothing like, just have fun, all of us should. Like, when we only used to, to make music and have fun, like, and with no expectation which I think that’s very important.  

So we make the boom bap, I say, I like that bit. Okay, let's do it. At the same time, say, you know what, try to take out that expectation just do it. It was complicated for me at least to make music for all that expectation. Too much expectation. I don't know if I can fit. But we all live that. All of us. It's not about, only about music. I think it’s the way that we are building, And it's like, there's a lot of stress. Let me be old and tired and laugh a lot, a little bit about it. Just that, you know. So that's the way that we make this EP. Like, I think it has been the cure of my stress. 

Meklit: This is a very spiritual perspective.

Ana: Yes. Or perhaps to, to live more—laughing more of myself. Don't take it so seriously. 

Meklit: Yes. 

Ana: I've got, I'm a mother, right? We need to continue to live, like. And we get this privilege right now. Like, I would say this, like my parents, I will not enter in details, but my parents lived terrible stuff and they always talk to me about the stuff that are very, como, I will not say happy, but the joke that was happening that time. And during the dictatorship, all the stupid stuff that nobody talk, and it was full of joy. When they was in prison, like, they was laughing a lot.Every time that my parents join with other friends, they talk about all the stupidity. And I say, wow, how people that can live that kind of brutality can have that, that joy, you know? And I think the joy is something that nobody can break. 

Meklit: Mmm

Ana: It’s part, it's part of, of the, I would say the, the necessity as a human being to continue to live. To continue to laugh, to continue to breathe, to continue to walk. Every day I've got to wake up my daughter got to school. Life continues and I've got to give her hope we can make a different world. And for that, she need me also with joy. But that energy is not natural. 

Meklit: Mmm

Ana: We got to push it, and all of us we got to all the time, like building that energy and in the day by day.

Meklit: It's an amazing kind of leadership in a way. It's like an undercurrent under everything that you're doing and it's also a gift because it's like, when I hear you, I know that a lot of people will be energized by what you're saying, I think that is an energy that we get to, to really push as a society, all around the world. All the time. Non stopping. It's hard. But it's something that we get to find because if not, it's not a life. And we love this life

Meklit: And we love this life.

Ana: With all the contradiction.

Narration: This year Ana released an EP called Serpiente de Madera. You can find it wherever you listen to music. 

This episode of Movement was produced by Isabel Hibbard and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our senior editor is Megan Tan. Our sound designer and co-founder is Ian Coss. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World and we are distributed by PRX.