340: Vengo, by Ana Tijoux

Ana Tijoux (Chile)
Vengo (2014)
17 tracks, 54 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

In rap, languages are all-important. If you’re not using language, you’re not rapping, you’re scatting. But there’s lots of languages, and they each have their own unique rhythms, melodies, structures and patterns inherent in them, meaning that some languages lend themselves to the technique of rap easier than others. I think this is probably a ‘your mileage may vary’ sort of thing based on your own personal aesthetic preferences and your ability to understand the actual lyrics being rapped. For example, I find German and Russian rap really unfulfilling in their flows, the syllables not really hitting my ear right. On the other hand, raps in Spanish and Arabic are delightful!

Which is one of the reasons why I love Ana Tijoux’s song ‘Somos Sur’ from her album Vengo so much. Tijoux is a Chilean rapper, born and raised in France before moving to Santiago de Chile as a teenager, where she learnt her chops on the mic. The Spanish language really suits her fairly staccato rap style, and then after a few verses, a treat: up steps Shadia Mansour, British-Palestinian singer and rapper giving a blistering verse in Arabic, filled with righteous anger and international solidarity among Tijoux’s anti-imperialist anthem. The two languages have very different aural profiles, but they sit together so well juxtaposed as raps on this absolute banger of a song.

The instrumental element of ‘Somos Sur’ is also top-notch, with reedy Latin saxophones and folkloric violins providing the main base alongside a driving beat, bass and squelchy, distorted synths, and with an elegant verse from Tijoux backed by a classical string quartet. The music across the whole album is similarly lush with diverse influences. You can tell it’s not going to be your standard hip-hop album when the very first track is opened by Andean quena flutes played in a traditional manner, over which the track’s groove is based around – it’s obvious that Tijoux set out to make a hip-hop album that could only have come from Chile.

Another thing that is genuinely impressive about Vengo is that it doesn’t contain any samples. All the sounds on this album were recorded specifically for it. The producers here aren’t constructing the music from various beds and layers taken from other tracks, they all act as arrangers, working with the musicians and piecing together each of the parts in a gloriously hands-on way.

The past 40 years have really made it clear that hip-hop – in all its elements of MCing, DJing, B-boying and graffiti – is a global language, but every language has its accents. With the mix of live sounds, Latin, indigenous and international influences, the amazing Arabic guest slot from Shadia Mansour and her own Spanish flows, Ana Tijoux’s hip-hop accent on Vengo is one of the most compelling around.