In the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC), celebrated last week in New York, the Chilean-French rapper Ana Tijoux talked to AL DÍA about her latest album, “Vengo,” which translates as "I Come," and in which she mixes hip hop beats with Andean and Latin American sounds. 

For her fifth album, Tijoux went on a musical journey and drew inspiration from listening to traditional music from Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador, among other countries.

If you haven’t listened to her music before, make no mistake, not even the pan flute this time around makes it sound like world music. 

“I had a need to reclaim this music, the music of all of us, that is part of our culture and also our identity”, Tijoux said. 

Having found so much material she set out to expand on it and figure out how to mix it with her own sound. And she delivered. 

The album opens with the energetic eponymous track, which sets the tone for the music that follows.

The lyrics are about indigenous pride, and call for Latin American unity and cultural empowerment.

“Let’s decolonize what we’ve been taught, with our black hair, our high cheekbones,” Tijoux raps over a horn-heavy beat in “Vengo”. 

The album follows with the more incendiary “Somos Sur,” in which she sings for “all those in silence, all of the suppressed, all of the invisible” in Latin America, Africa and in which she advocates for a free Palestine. 

Then comes “Antipatriarca”, a feminist anthem about the multiple roles that “strong, insurgent, independent and courageous” women can play in society.

“You are not going to humiliate me / scream at me / hit me / denigrate me / force me / silence me / shut me up,” she sings on the pan flute heavy track. 

These are only a few examples of the progressive elements of the lyrics in Tijoux’s latest album.

There’s no doubt “Vengo” was inspired in great part in response to many elements of post-colonialism that are still present in Latin America and that affect people according to their race, class and gender. 

When asked about it, Tijoux said that in every country she’s been to in Latin America, “where people are dark-skinned like me,” it is surprising to see that the people in power, advertising and media are all “blond, tall and skinny.” 

“That lack of recognition that we all suffer ultimately has to do with wanting to be something else, when the most important thing a country has is its identity,” Tijoux finalized.