America’s greatest export may be its popular culture. As Quincy Jones liked to say, American music is the soundtrack of the world.
But more than any specific set of sounds or style of dress, or way of moving, it may be the openness of the music, its ability to absorb different identities and experiences, that made that kind of spread possible.
Take the case of Ana Tijoux. Born in Paris to Chilean parents who had fled dictatorship, she discovered hip hop as a teenager in France.
“In the 80s, it was a boom,” she told me. “Paris, Marseille… everywhere.”
France, she says, had access — to records, to concerts, to the culture as it was happening. Ana eventually returned to Chile and found something very different.
“Very far away… to have access to records or concerts was super complicated.”
But that distance created something else. “People that fall in love with hip hop there… really fall in love. Not for money. Just for the music.”
Tijoux herself was moving between worlds, and hip hop became one of the threads that connected them. “Chile was my origin… but I was not raised there. Like a ghost.”
That sense of distance extended into the music she loved. She responded first to the sound — the rhythm — before she understood the words.
“I liked the flow… it sounded good. But I didn’t understand anything.” What she understood was phrasing. Time. The way a voice sits inside a beat.
And that’s where the connection to jazz comes in. “Some jazz musicians are rappers… the way they play.”
For Tijoux, the link between jazz and hip hop also lives in the idea of voice — of sounding like yourself. “I will never be you… and I don’t want to be you. I love the fact that we are different…I just wanted to be free… just to be me.”
She broke through internationally with her 2010 album 1977 — a record as stylistically open as her own story, blending hip hop with Latin music, jazz, and cinematic textures.
Fifteen years later, she returns with another project rooted in time. Her new EP 97, recorded with longtime collaborator DJ Dacel, looks back to the year they met — and the music that shaped them.
On the opening track “Vinos y Vinilos,” she name-checks her influences: Nas, D’Angelo, A Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr.
Artists she would eventually meet — and, in some cases, build relationships with.
“I remember the first time I met Ma Dukes, the mother of J Dilla,” she told me. “She said, ‘Why Chile?’… we were just super fans.”
The track also hints at another lifelong influence. “I come from a family that we always drink wine,” she said. “It’s a family affair.” France and Chile — two wine cultures. Two musical cultures. And in her work, all of it comes together.
Ana Tijoux’s story — discovering hip hop in France, carrying it to Chile, and bringing it back into conversation with the culture that created it — is a reminder of how music moves.
It leaves home. It changes. And sometimes, it comes back again — with a new voice, and a new flavor.
