Ana Tijoux photographed at BottleRock Napa on May 29, 2022. Nate McKinley/STAFF.

NAPA — Even successful songwriters like Ana Tijoux sometimes question whether what they’re doing is impacting people the way it should.

The Chilean-French singer and rapper hasn’t released an album of her own since 2014. Although that’s about to change, Tijoux has faced roadblocks in recent years—not the least of which was finding what she wanted to say.

“What’s been more difficult for me right now is to write songs and ask, to myself, if somebody’s interested in what I’m writing,” she said shortly before taking the stage at BottleRock Napa in late May. “Sometimes there’s clouds on my head, and sometimes I try to not put any attention to these clouds. … Sometimes I’m asking stuff like, ‘Do people really care, or nobody care?’ I’ve got all these questions, like anybody, [in addition to] creative moments.”

It’s not like Tijoux, who turned 45 in June, hasn’t had things to say. This often outspoken woman isn’t just an artist but an activist. Born to Chilean parents exiled in France during the Pinochet dictatorship, her songs often tackle injustice, be it political, patriarchal, economic or religious.

Starting in the ‘90s in Santiago, Chile in underground hip-hop group Makiza, she’s gone on to incorporate many sounds in her solo work, such as Latin music, rock, jazz. Her song “1977,” off the 2010 album of the same name, was a surprise hit, garnering acclaim from critics and musicians, and growing her fanbase in the U.S.

She’s won a Latin Grammy and been nominated for a Grammy. Some have called her the Chilean Lauryn Hill, but another apt comparison is Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, also an outspoken critic of injustice of all types.

Ana Tijoux performs at BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 29, 2022.

The two first met when Morello came to Santiago years ago, wanting to learn more about the country’s oppression of dissidents.

“He asked me to bring him to some place that he wanted to [see], and I proposed other place that was torture-centered and was a memorial place,” Tijoux said. “We went to meet the wife of [teacher, artist and political activist] Victor Jara.”

The two of them collaborated on “Lightning Over Mexico,” a song from his 2021 EP with the Bloody Beetroots, The Catastrophists. The song was about 43 Mexican student activists who were disappeared by their government. While it’s a softer song for Morello, Tijoux delivers bars that bring the intensity.

“It’s like a relaxed mood, but very deep. It’s different from what we know of Tom Morello,” Tijoux said. “It’s interesting because you can find another face of him in that song, another perspective of what he can bring to music.

Last March, she and Argentinean artist (and good friend) Sara Hebe partnered and wrote reggaeton banger “Almacen de Datos,” which looks at inequalities within the music industry and addresses Tijoux’s creative concerns about songwriting and the industry at large.

Is the goal to create art or to see how fast an artist can grow and use her social media following to make money? How much does the actual message matter? Are artists selling their music or their souls?

Ana Tijoux performs at BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 29, 2022.

“Her idea was to make all these concerns about the industry and how to take positions, and how we got to sell ourselves,” Tijoux said. “Everything is so absurd. So the song was very naturally made. We didn’t have to make so much question about it. All this [was] conversations that we had went to each other.”

She’s released a handful of other one-off singles since 2019, including “Cacerolazo” (“Saucepan,” as in banging pots and pans in protest); “Rebelión de Octubre” (“October Rebellion”); “Pa Que” (“What For?”); “No Estamos Solas (“We Are Not Alone,” about how women are mistreated in Chile); and the self-explanatory “Antifa Dance,” which she wrote following the police murder of George Floyd.

“I think all these terrible deaths and all the absurdity of murder for racism and anti-Semita; everything’s in the same boat,” she said. “Of course, everything affects my music. … The lyrics say everything. I was asking myself how we arrived at this point where all this violence in politics corrupts so easily.”

Ana Tijoux spent much of 2020 at home. She’s had a lot of time to reflect and try to understand the world’s senseless fighting, wars and other injustices since then. As a mother—before this interview, she took a call from her daughter back in France and coaxed her to bed—many of these worries have an added urgency.

Ana Tijoux performs at BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 29, 2022.

“Sometimes you’ve got to make a balance between all this terrible news that is happening right now and trying at the same time, even if it seems very contradictory, to find some life. Because if not, you will be under water. It can break you because everything is so absurd,” she said. “The shootings that are happening right now here has been news everywhere in the world. Plus the pandemic, plus the war, plus [the U.S. oncoming loss of abortion rights]. It’s back in America, like medieval. I try to stay connected with what happened, but at the same time, I try to be in mental care. It’s not that I’m not interested at all; on the contrary. The question is what we can do with all that info. We all need to be aware of everything that happened, so what do we do with all that?

“Being a mother in this world and all these questions—of course it’s not always easy,” she said.

These worries and other concerns are fueling her first album since 2014’s Vengo. She’s still writing and said she doesn’t know where she’ll end up. But she’s on her way to finally finding what she really wants to say. And as always, Ana Tijoux won’t hold anything back.

“I’m very interested in the idea of utopia. I think we’re living in a moment where utopia has been broken,” she said. “It’s important to have utopias in society. … I think it’s important to dream of something; another way of life.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter. Follow photographer Nathan McKinley at Instagram.com/memories.by.mckinley.