On “1977” and subsequent albums, Tijoux slipped easily between rapping and singing. With his 2011 album, “La Bala,” he began collaborating with producer and multi-instrumentalist Andrés Celis. He helped expand his music across eras and regions, drawing on R&B, reggae, rock, electronica and multiple folk traditions along with powerful hip-hop samples.
“We are not super experts in any style of music,” Celis said in a video interview from his studio in Santiago, Chile. “That's why we are used to mixing everything in a genuine, almost naive way.”
They build all their songs together. “She's a very intuitive artist,” Celis said. “The style of work we have is that I bring something very simple: some chords, maybe a little melody, sometimes a bass line, whatever goes with the vibe, you know? And then she'll say, 'Yeah, that's what we need to talk about.'”
Tijoux has often written about politics, feminism, resistance, solidarity, and the depredations of capitalism: songs like “Somos Sur,” a modal stomper about the silencing, strength, and bravery of Africa and Latin America, which features the Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour; and “Antipatriarca”, a feminist manifesto with flutes, guitars and Andean drums.
But after the release of his 2014 album, “Vengo,” Tijoux’s songwriting slowed down. While continuing to tour, he also raised two children: Luciano, now 18, and Emiliana, 10, and worked on various collaborations. One was “Lightning Over Mexico” featuring Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and the Bloody Beetroots, in which Tijoux angrily rapped about murdered Mexican student activists. Another was “Almacén de Data,” a reggaeton song by Argentine composer Sara Hebe that rejects treating music as a commodity in the attention economy: “For a businessman, everything is a market,” Tijoux scoffs. .
Between albums, events prompted Tijoux to write singles. They included “Pa' Qué,” an energetic salsa song, featuring Puerto Rican rapper PJ Sin Suela, which mocked politicians downplaying Covid-19; “October Rebellion”, a ballad that becomes an anthem that praises the protests in Chile and around the world; and the tough rap “Antifa Dance.”
