Anita Tijoux
Encyclopedia
Anamaría Merino commonly known by her stage name
Ana Tijoux or Anita Tijoux, is a French
-Chile
an musician
. She became famous in Latin America
as the female MC of hip-hop group Makiza during the late 1990s. In 2006, she crossed over to the Latin mainstream pop
due to her collaboration with Mexican
songstress Julieta Venegas
in the radio hit "Eres para mí
". She is currently promoting her second solo album, 1977
.
Tijoux is the daughter of Chilean parents living in political exile in France during Augusto Pinochet
's dictatorship of Chile
.
, then in Spanish
. For a while, she formed part of a group that included Zaturno, later of Tiro de Gracia
. In 1997, she joined Seo2, Cenzi, and DJ Squat to form Makiza.
Makiza released their first cassette in 1998, Vida Salvaje. It was an independent production but gained huge acceptance in the local scene.
At the same time, Tiro de Gracia
became the best selling Chilean rap group of all times with their debut Ser humano!!
and that focused the interest of major record labels in rap music. As a result of this, Sony
approached Makiza and offered them a record deal. Aerolíneas Makiza was the result of this deal, a CD that included new and improved versions of some songs from Vida Salvaje plus new song, including the hit single "La Rosa De Los Vientos".
Aerolíneas Makiza put Makiza instantly at the top of the game of Latin American hip-hop. Their style of rap was much more evolved than most the other Spanish speaking rap published in the continent to the moment. Their production style resembled the New York
underground sound inspired by the Native Tongues
. Their lyrics lacked the overwhelming machismo and violence of average rap, focusing more in more sensitive matters. That helped them receive the approval from a wider audience that was not involved in hip-hop culture.
Right before the release of their second single and their touring through neighbor countries, Tijoux decided to break off the group for personal reasons. At the moment, she announced that she was abandoning not only Makiza but hip-hop as a whole and her music career as well.
In 2001, Tijoux moved back to France where half of her relatives still lived. She stayed in France until 2004 and during that period, she did not release any music.
After her return to Chile in 2004, she started singing with a Chilean funk band called Aluzinati. That same year, she appeared as a featured artist in Control Machete
's last album, Uno Dos Bandera, and she also recorded a song with Julieta Venegas for the soundtrack of the movie Subterra.
It came as a surprise to the fans when Makiza announced a reunion show to promote the re-release of Vida Salvaje, now re-mastered and in CD format. Due to the success of that historical concert, Anita and Seo2, the only two remaining members of Makiza decided to reunite the group and started working on new material.
Casino Royale was the name of the new Makiza CD, released on 2005 under the independent label Bizarro Records. The new formation of Makiza included a third MC, Sonido Acido, and instead of using only one producer like they used to do in the past, they collaborated with different producers. In 2006, Tijoux announced she was leaving Makiza again and launching her solo career.
Tijoux started recording demos for her long-awaited solo debut with different producers. At one point, she even had a full band of live musicians, straying a bit from her pure hip-hop roots and exploring new forms and collaborations. During this time, she also collaborated as a guest vocalist in Julieta Venegas' radio-hit "Eres para Mí," which suddenly launched Tijoux to the mainstream pop market all over Latin America, Spain
, and the United States
.
In September 2007, Tijoux finally released her solo debut, named Kaos, under the independent label Oveja Negra.
.
Thanks to the first single, "Despabílate", Anita was nominated for the Latin version of the MTV Video Music Awards 2007 under the categories Best New Artist and Best Urban Artist. At the same time, she was nominated for song of the year together with Julieta Venegas for "Eres Para Mí".
In October 2009, Tijoux released her second solo album, titled 1977 after the year she was born. The album was a return to her rap roots, an homage to the "golden age of hip-hop"; it was largely auto-biographical, exploring mature themes from her own life, from the death of a close friend to having a creative crises, from friendship to bad luck, amongst others. It was simple and straight to the point, as emphasized by her leaving behind a lot of the singing she had been doing of late in other more pop collaborations, and concentrating on rap, both in Spanish and French. After years of sharing the spotlight with her group, collaborating with other artists, and trying to find her way as a solo artist, she has finally arrived in her own right—a raw, direct, and mature MC.
Recorded between May and September 2009, the new album was produced by Hordatoj, Foex y Tee, of the label Potoco Discos, together with Habitación del Pánico. Guests on the record include the saxophonist Agustín Moya with whom she worked with in Aluzinati, Andrés Celis, Solo Di Medina, Bubaseta, Stailok from the group Movimiento Original, DJ Dacel, Quique Neira from Godwana, Cómo Asesinar A Felipes, and the Detroit-based MC Invincible, who she met over MySpace and did a virtual collaboration for the song "Sube".
The album and its first single 1977 were an immediate hit in the underground rap circles of Chile, where she was welcomed back after a bit of a stray. The record was amongst the top 10 of 2009 for the blog [worldhiphopmarket.com], and it was soon picked up by the U.S.-based Latin Alternative label Nacional Records
, who released it in April 2010. She was invited to attend the prestigious South By South West Music Festival in Austin, Texas
, in March 2010, and from there went on to her first ever North American tour. The song 1977 is featured in FIFA 11
soundtrack, and it also appears in episode five
of the fourth season of Breaking Bad
.
Stage name
A stage name, also called a showbiz name or screen name, is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers such as actors, wrestlers, comedians, and musicians.-Motivation to use a stage name:...
Ana Tijoux or Anita Tijoux, is a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
-Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
. She became famous in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
as the female MC of hip-hop group Makiza during the late 1990s. In 2006, she crossed over to the Latin mainstream pop
Latin pop
Latin pop generally refers to pop music that has what may be perceived a Latin American influence...
due to her collaboration with Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
songstress Julieta Venegas
Julieta Venegas
Julieta Venegas Percevault , known professionally as Julieta Venegas, is a Mexican singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and producer, who sings pop-rock in Spanish. She speaks English, Portuguese, and Spanish fluently. She has a twin sister, Yvonne, who is a photographer...
in the radio hit "Eres para mí
Eres para mí
"Eres Para Mí" is Julieta Venegas' third single release from her fourth studio album, Limón y Sal.- Song information :...
". She is currently promoting her second solo album, 1977
1977 (Ana Tijoux album)
The album received generally favorable reviews, with critics complimenting Tijoux as "an artist with the promise to cross borders and genres." Critics also complementing the production for the album, writing "The production suits Ana nicely as well...
.
Tijoux is the daughter of Chilean parents living in political exile in France during Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
's dictatorship of Chile
Chile under Pinochet
Chile was ruled by a military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet from 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat until 1990 when the Chilean transition to democracy began. The authoritarian military government was characterized by systematic suppression of political parties and...
.
Biography
After the return to democracy in Chile, Tijoux flew back to her father's land. Being a teenager, she found home in the emerging hip-hop scene of Santiago and she started rhyming first in FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, then in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. For a while, she formed part of a group that included Zaturno, later of Tiro de Gracia
Tiro de gracia
Tiro de Gracia is a chilean Hip hop group formed by MCs Juan Sativo and Lenwa Dura, they began their career on the early 1990s, considered one of the most popular and influential in Latin American outside of Mexico....
. In 1997, she joined Seo2, Cenzi, and DJ Squat to form Makiza.
Makiza released their first cassette in 1998, Vida Salvaje. It was an independent production but gained huge acceptance in the local scene.
At the same time, Tiro de Gracia
Tiro de gracia
Tiro de Gracia is a chilean Hip hop group formed by MCs Juan Sativo and Lenwa Dura, they began their career on the early 1990s, considered one of the most popular and influential in Latin American outside of Mexico....
became the best selling Chilean rap group of all times with their debut Ser humano!!
Ser humano!!
Ser humano!! is the debut album from the chilean hip hop group Tiro de Gracia. It was released in 1997. The single "El juego verdadero" brought immediate popularity to the group and played for a long while on the radio...
and that focused the interest of major record labels in rap music. As a result of this, Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
approached Makiza and offered them a record deal. Aerolíneas Makiza was the result of this deal, a CD that included new and improved versions of some songs from Vida Salvaje plus new song, including the hit single "La Rosa De Los Vientos".
Aerolíneas Makiza put Makiza instantly at the top of the game of Latin American hip-hop. Their style of rap was much more evolved than most the other Spanish speaking rap published in the continent to the moment. Their production style resembled the New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
underground sound inspired by the Native Tongues
Native tongues
Native Tongues is a book by the linguist Charles Berlitz.It is a list of words in different languages, etymology and questions with speculations far and wide about words....
. Their lyrics lacked the overwhelming machismo and violence of average rap, focusing more in more sensitive matters. That helped them receive the approval from a wider audience that was not involved in hip-hop culture.
Right before the release of their second single and their touring through neighbor countries, Tijoux decided to break off the group for personal reasons. At the moment, she announced that she was abandoning not only Makiza but hip-hop as a whole and her music career as well.
In 2001, Tijoux moved back to France where half of her relatives still lived. She stayed in France until 2004 and during that period, she did not release any music.
After her return to Chile in 2004, she started singing with a Chilean funk band called Aluzinati. That same year, she appeared as a featured artist in Control Machete
Control Machete
Control Machete is a Mexican hip hop group from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. Its members are Fermin IV , Patricio "Pato" Chapa Elizalde, and Toy Kenobi .-History:...
's last album, Uno Dos Bandera, and she also recorded a song with Julieta Venegas for the soundtrack of the movie Subterra.
It came as a surprise to the fans when Makiza announced a reunion show to promote the re-release of Vida Salvaje, now re-mastered and in CD format. Due to the success of that historical concert, Anita and Seo2, the only two remaining members of Makiza decided to reunite the group and started working on new material.
Casino Royale was the name of the new Makiza CD, released on 2005 under the independent label Bizarro Records. The new formation of Makiza included a third MC, Sonido Acido, and instead of using only one producer like they used to do in the past, they collaborated with different producers. In 2006, Tijoux announced she was leaving Makiza again and launching her solo career.
Tijoux started recording demos for her long-awaited solo debut with different producers. At one point, she even had a full band of live musicians, straying a bit from her pure hip-hop roots and exploring new forms and collaborations. During this time, she also collaborated as a guest vocalist in Julieta Venegas' radio-hit "Eres para Mí," which suddenly launched Tijoux to the mainstream pop market all over Latin America, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
In September 2007, Tijoux finally released her solo debut, named Kaos, under the independent label Oveja Negra.
.
Thanks to the first single, "Despabílate", Anita was nominated for the Latin version of the MTV Video Music Awards 2007 under the categories Best New Artist and Best Urban Artist. At the same time, she was nominated for song of the year together with Julieta Venegas for "Eres Para Mí".
In October 2009, Tijoux released her second solo album, titled 1977 after the year she was born. The album was a return to her rap roots, an homage to the "golden age of hip-hop"; it was largely auto-biographical, exploring mature themes from her own life, from the death of a close friend to having a creative crises, from friendship to bad luck, amongst others. It was simple and straight to the point, as emphasized by her leaving behind a lot of the singing she had been doing of late in other more pop collaborations, and concentrating on rap, both in Spanish and French. After years of sharing the spotlight with her group, collaborating with other artists, and trying to find her way as a solo artist, she has finally arrived in her own right—a raw, direct, and mature MC.
Recorded between May and September 2009, the new album was produced by Hordatoj, Foex y Tee, of the label Potoco Discos, together with Habitación del Pánico. Guests on the record include the saxophonist Agustín Moya with whom she worked with in Aluzinati, Andrés Celis, Solo Di Medina, Bubaseta, Stailok from the group Movimiento Original, DJ Dacel, Quique Neira from Godwana, Cómo Asesinar A Felipes, and the Detroit-based MC Invincible, who she met over MySpace and did a virtual collaboration for the song "Sube".
The album and its first single 1977 were an immediate hit in the underground rap circles of Chile, where she was welcomed back after a bit of a stray. The record was amongst the top 10 of 2009 for the blog [worldhiphopmarket.com], and it was soon picked up by the U.S.-based Latin Alternative label Nacional Records
Nacional Records
Max Glücksmann, born was an Argentine Jewish pioneer of the music and film industries.-Biography:Glücksmann was born in Czernowitz, then part of the Austrian Empire, and emigrated to Argentina in 1890....
, who released it in April 2010. She was invited to attend the prestigious South By South West Music Festival in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, in March 2010, and from there went on to her first ever North American tour. The song 1977 is featured in FIFA 11
FIFA 11
FIFA 11 is the 18th title in Electronic Arts' FIFA series of football video games. Developed by EA Canada, it was published by Electronic Arts worldwide under the EA Sports label...
soundtrack, and it also appears in episode five
Shotgun (Breaking Bad)
"Shotgun" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series Breaking Bad, and the 38th overall episode of the series. It originally aired on AMC in the United States on August 14, 2011.-Plot:...
of the fourth season of Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is an American television drama series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. Set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White , a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer at the beginning of the series...
.
Discography
- Vida Salvaje (Independent, 1998)
- Aerolíneas Makiza (Sony, 1999)
- Casino Royale (Bizarro, 2005)
- Kaos (Oveja Negra, 2007)
- 19771977 (Ana Tijoux album)The album received generally favorable reviews, with critics complimenting Tijoux as "an artist with the promise to cross borders and genres." Critics also complementing the production for the album, writing "The production suits Ana nicely as well...
(Oveja Negra, 2009) (Nacional RecordsNacional RecordsMax Glücksmann, born was an Argentine Jewish pioneer of the music and film industries.-Biography:Glücksmann was born in Czernowitz, then part of the Austrian Empire, and emigrated to Argentina in 1890....
, 2010) - Elefant Mixtape (2011)
Featured collaborations
- Subdemo - FDA
- Uno, Dos Bandera - Control Machete
- Roda Do Funk - Funk Como Le Gusta
- Limón y SalLimón y Sal-Personnel:* Julieta Venegas - Vocals, vocals , accordion, guitar , keyboards, programming, composer* Juanchi Baleiron - Guitar , guitar , baritone guitar...
- Julieta Venegas - Freno de Mano - Los Tres
- La Medicina - Los Tetas
- Supervielle - Bajofondo Tango Club
- Música Para Después del Almuerzo - Bitman & Roban