(music playing).
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org,
The War and Peace Report.
I'm Amy Goodman.
Joined here in our Democracy Now! studios
by the Chilean hip-hop artist and
musician Ana Tijoux.
Ana Tijoux, or Anita, was born in France in
1977 to parents who were
jailed and later fled Chile under the dictatorship
of Augusto Pinochet.
She returned to Chile in 1993
and in the late '90s became
known as part of the hip-hop group Makiza.
As a solo artist,
she's collaborated with the musician
Julieta Venegas on a hit song "Eres Para Mi,"
had her song "1977" featured on the TV
series Breaking Bad, and won multiple
nominations for both the Grammys and the Latin
Grammys.
Ana Tijoux's work is deeply political,
exploring topics we frequently
discuss here on Democracy Now! from the work of
journalist and author Naomi Klein, The
Shock Doctrine, to the secretive Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade deal.
Ana Tijoux joins me now in New York where
she'll be performing
this evening at Central Park SummerStage and
on Friday at Club Europa in Brooklyn.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!
ANA TIJOUX: Thank you so much.
AMY GOODMAN: It's great to have you here for
the first time.
Talk about your music,
what inspires you, Ana.
ANA TIJOUX: I would say that music, my way
to arrive to the music has been almost like a
big crush, because I've got a lot of colleagues
of mine that arrived to the music because,
since they was very young.
But I arrived because I used to like to write.
And then I don't know how I discovered that singing,
it was better than writing.
So it was in that way, and thanks to
so many amazing musicians from Latin America
that inspired to me and pushed me to write.
AMY GOODMAN: So you were born in France to
Chilean parents.
Talk about your political education,
how you came to understand
what was happening in Chile and Latin America.
ANA TIJOUX: I think like there is so many
like prejudice about to say,
having a political education.
And I always say that to have a political education
is a vision with life and
dignity of life.
So I had the chance to have amazing parents
that always put on the table
some subject and talk about it and have some
reflection with the world.
So it was not only about Chile,
but about the vision about the
world.
And since today we continue to talk
about the same topics, basically, it's always
the same history repeating one to another.
And in the same way I feel that the music is an
amazing weapon, an amazing tool like to have
this reflection with the world.
It's a conversation, a dialogue with the world.
And so I would say that
to have a political education
has been like, is the DNA of my work and what I do.
But also I feel that music got to be free
also and to be free of the political by himself.
But, I think there is a lot of ignorance about
just political.
We say political
and everybody say no, no, no, no, please don't
touch that.
Don't go there, like,
make music, and, but don't make political.
And, but I think it's got hard to do to be
sensitive
and sensible about what happened also.
And I can make a difference between to be
an artist
and to be sensitive.
I think they are both of them is a marriage
between both worlds.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you, Ana, about
your latest record, your latest CD, Vengo.
And one of the inspirations for it, a man
we've had on Democracy Now!
quite often.
The great Uruguayan writer, Latin American
writer Eduardo Galeano.
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