Vida

Chronique

Vida is the aptly-titled fifth long player by Chilean-French rapper, songwriter, singer and activist Ana Tijoux, her first since 2014's Vengo. She wasn't absent -- she toured, released singles, guested on collaborations -- she was raising two children, founding a record label and production company, and moving to Spain. These 15 tracks reflect changes in her private world and ours. It was produced by longtime collaborator Andrés Celis who also played most instruments here, and arranged strings with Alberto Perez. Celis expands Tijoux's musical reach, infusing her soulful, activist hip hop with R&B, EDM, rock, dubwise and dancehall reggae, and Latin folk music traditions.
Set opener "Millionaria" is a stellar example. Celis weds breezy, Afro-Cuban rhythms to tropical hip hop, overdubbing layers of Tijoux's sung and rapped vocals comparing experiential wealth in life to materialism atop piano montunos, funk backbeat, and swirling ambient backdrops. "Óyeme," weds a militant rap to Afrobeat drum funk, staggered hip hop, amid a multivalent swirl of chanted voices drawing metaphorical parallels between slave ships and the modern treatment of immigrants and refugees. British singer-songwriter Omar Lye-Fook guests on the title track. Tijoux delivers a muscular hard won optimism as he croons the refrain atop celebratory jazz-piano, syncopated loops, and cavernous reverb. "Tu Sae'" joins primitive go go rhythms to 21st century g-funk and humid, breezy hip hop with guests Talib Kweli and De La Soul's Posdnuos. Single "Niñx," and is a punchy, dancefloor manifesto urging her daughter to find internal, militant strength in the cultivation and expression of joy. "Bailando Sola Aqui"'s summery backbeat joins a bass drum loop, shimmering electric guitars, and gracefully stacked keyboards under Tijoux's rap and croon, that she's tired of grieving absent lovers and seeking hollow fullfillment. She vows to find happiness in self-acceptance and self-expression through body, mind and spirit. "Tania," for her sister who died in 2019 from cancer, is at once an elegy and a celebration. Folk melodies hover and swoop atop funky, syncopated, cumbia rhythms, a swelling organ, and Tijoux's elastic singing voice. Guest iLE assists on "Busco Mi Nombre" a somber paean to the tens of thousands arrested and "disappeared" by the dictatorships of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina and Chile's Augusto Pinochet (Tijoux's parents escaped persecution there by emigrating to Paris where she was born). The words of an abuela (grandmother) of one of Argentina's disappeared prefaces the piano and string-laced ballad with a dramatic rhythm track, rendering it cinematically poignant. Set closer "Fin Del Mundo," is arguably the most joyful, serene song ever about the impending end of the world, from wars, environmental collapse, falling comets, continental droughts, and more. Juxtaposing neo disco and 21st century techno, Tijoux accepts the inevitable and exhorts her listeners to, "dance naked" in the face of that certain destruction. Vida is the statement of an adult woman who has seen plenthy; she's woven activism, emotional and spiritual growth into the fiber of her being and is offering that experience freely and generously.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo