“Life” (Victoria Producciones, 2023) is the fifth album in the name of Ana Tijoux (Lille, France, 1977). The first that he publishes in the last nine years, since “Come” (National Records, 2014), since in the project “Red and Black” (2018) addressed classics of Latin American song.
It is an album that emits its classic hip hop sound with a strong imprint of roots, marked by the death of some loved ones (including his sister, hence the dichotomy with its title), again produced by the faithful Andrés Celis . It is also the first that he has published since he has lived in Barcelona, where he has lived for two years. We talked about all this over zoom. I see, by the way, a tattoo on his forearm in which he says “1977”: the year of his birth and his most popular song, for more than thirteen years. Quite a symbol.
Nine years have passed since your previous album with your own songs. What took you so long?
It took me nine years because I didn’t stop spinning, I didn’t stop working, and also raising: I have two children. Combine work with my personal life. I didn’t have the time to compose, sit down and also process what it means to not have stopped for so long, I think.
A while ago I was reading an interview that you gave for El País a few months ago in which you confessed to having felt terror while working on previous albums. Has this also happened to you? Did you feel a certain blockage or was everything fluid?
Good question. I think there is a natural vertigo before any album one makes. I would dare to say that no artist is totally sure of the work he makes. There is always a margin of insecurity that is part of the fun of all this, I think. Having that dizziness, that pepper, not having the complete confidence to dare, unless one is an advertiser and has a winning formula. If one wants to break that fence, there is always a margin of uncertainty. It is part of creating. If I were a publicist, it would be different. But is not the case. With this album there was that natural dizziness, this weight of being nine years old, and also the weight of personal expectations. I think there is a mix, but the most beautiful thing is when one begins to get rid of that fear or to get naked, and assume that whatever one does can have a good or bad reception. It’s happened to me with all my albums.
“For me the album is very danceable, very happy. It makes me want to dance, I don’t know why”
One of the songs, “Tania,” talks about your sister, who died four years ago due to cancer. And the album is called Life. I guess the two things are deeply related.
My sister Tania passed away on October 6, 2019. And life leads to death. It is the great contradiction that all human beings experience, that it is so difficult for us to say goodbye because all this leads to the issue of absence. The absence of the other. And learning to let go of a lot of paradigms that are personal and intimate. Each person experiences grief in a very unique way. And each duel is different. There is no just death. Although I don’t know if this is said correctly, because there are people who have very serious illnesses and no longer want to live… there are a lot of personal networks that are very intimate. Tania died, then my other half-brother died, my bassist died, then a friend died of cancer and another friend died a month ago. I had at least a lot of reaffirmation of putting Life as a response to death as well. It’s funny, because I wanted to put Duelo on the album, but my mother told me: “No! Give it Life!” And I thought it was pretty. And what life entails, which is full of luminosity. But I’m still processing it, because thinking and feeling are not static. They move permanently.
You published a book, “Getting Out Your Voice” (2023), in which you wrote about your own experiences. Did it influence the album, because of what is always said that when one surpasses middle age, one feels the need to reflect and look beyond?
Yes, it’s like the beauty of aging, which also seems to be very forbidden in our current society. There is an imposition of youth, that youth is very beautiful, because there is a vitality, but birthdays also have a beauty that I love, which has to do with contemplation, taking things more calmly… that’s how it is. I feel physically and also in many things that I no longer take so much weight on, others do distress me more, and I’m sure that is also reflected in the album. I don’t know if the book and the album are similar, for me they are quite different. For me the album is very danceable, very happy. It makes me want to dance, I don’t know why.
Once again Andrés Celis is on production, as in your two previous works.
I have known Andrés since I was very young, since I was eight or nine years old, I was a schoolmate of his brother, and I have seen his entire process of musical growth, we have a quite unique brotherhood, which has been woven over time and with the years. I think he translates for me very well, and we know each other a lot because of a historical topic. He knows both the brightest and darkest parts of me, the insecure and the most secure, and that has also been part of our friendship as well. When my sister died, I was with him. We have experienced many things together. We have a lot of synchronicity and trust in each other.
“I saw on the news that everything was so upside down that I thought about my daughter and about me as a girl too”
In “Dancing Alone Here and Now” you seem to sing against the idea of romantic love, which you mention.
It’s my feeling, but I wouldn’t tell anyone how to live. I have many friends who live as a couple. And they fight, they love each other, they have crises, they stay together… I speak only for myself, and it makes me very sorry to be alone. It’s something I hadn’t experienced, and I think it’s great. And also as a kind of decision, like in that construction of romantic love it seems that one has to have a partner to complement walking with someone, and the opposite is happening to me, which I think is great. Although you are never truly alone, you are surrounded by people. Family, friends… I’m telling you this now and tomorrow I may fall in love like crazy and something else will happen to me, but at this moment it does me a lot of good to explore from returning to myself. It has to do with these duels, too. He urged me to live these duels alone. Super alone. And the romantic love that I have been taught since school, in cartoons, in society, all this about how one should be happy with someone, doesn’t make any sense to me at this moment, personally. And I also feel very immature to be with someone, at 46 years old. It would be very harmful for me at this moment to be with someone, because I feel very adolescent in some things and I think I have to work a lot on myself. One thing no one wants to say, by the way. I see my friends’ fights and I wouldn’t want to be in that place.
Look, that also connects with “Niñx”, another song in which you talk about the need to return to the kids or teenagers that we once were.
Completely. It’s a song I made for my daughter, actually. I saw on the news that everything was so upside down that I thought about my daughter and about me as a child too. In the child that we all carry, in the end. That thing that one has of creating, of imagination, of creating games where there are none. I wrote it thinking about her, or about my mother, about all the boys and girls in the world. My daughter was the driving force, but in the end she expanded.
In “Óyeme” I don’t know if you talk about the social and political situation in your country or the world in general.
From the world in general. What happens in your country, when we talk about the issue of violence, are things that can be extrapolated to other countries. Unfortunately. It is true that there are singularities depending on the territories, but they are extrapolated. And even though I don’t live in certain territories, that doesn’t mean I don’t have empathy for them.
A few weeks ago, Billboard, in its celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of hip hop as a musical genre, named you the third best female rapper in Spanish in history, only surpassed on the list by Residente and Vico C. The first woman. How do you value this kind of recognition?
I hug them, of course. It is an honor, I find it nice to always receive affection, it would be a lie to say no. It’s true that this thing about the best, the worst, the number one, the number three, this pyramid thing always makes me a little noisy, because I don’t do it: I can’t say who my favorite singer is, it sounds like when we were little and they asked you who you preferred, your father or your mother. There is no competition there. But I do welcome them. I found it very curious that many friends from the rap world wrote to me with great affection, but at the same time I saw the fight between the men who appeared on the list and it seemed great to me, because a postcard of women has always been made as a fight. of cats, that we hate each other and such, and the only fight I saw was the one between the men. It was a tremendous honor, although many names are missing, but I understand that this is going to rotate, many new generations have to arrive and it is going to be very nice.
Ana Tijoux’s agenda
Saturday 9 Mar 20.00h 20€
Sunday 10 Mar 8:00 p.m. €20