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Tanya Tagaq Grabs The World By The Throatmad skills from Nunavut

BY MAR Y DICK IE ISSUE 118

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Watching Tanya Tagaq perform is more than just an auditory and visual experience: it’s physical. As the Nunavut-born,Manitoba-based throat singer moves around a stage, she unleashes something fierce and powerful that comes fromdeep within her body, yet seems positively unearthly. She mostly improvises her performances, tapping intotraditional Inuit throat singing—growling, cooing, howling, and manipulating her breath into frenetic rhythms—butadapting it to create a hybrid that sounds simultaneously animal and alien, ancient and modern. It’s visceral, earthy,and unabashedly sexual, frightening, mesmerizing, and exhilarating. The effect she has on audiences has sparked avid interest around the world in her work and has led to many creativecollaborations, starting with Björk and including the Kronos Quartet, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, MikePatton, Matthew Barney, and Buck 65, among others. She has provided soundtracks for several films, including RobertJ. Flaherty’s renowned and controversial 1922 documentary Nanook of the North. And now she’s getting ready torelease her third solo album (still untitled at press time) and preparing for a string of live performances in 2014,including her third appearance at Carnegie Hall. “It kind of blows my mind,” says the soft-spoken Tagaq, over a plate of oysters at a Toronto restaurant. “Never in amillion years did I think I’d be doing this. I’ve been so fortunate, especially in the people who want to work with me.”Indeed, though she can clearly entrance an audience on her own, it’s collaborating with others that really ignitesTagaq’s music. Working with a DJ, a string quartet, a band, an orchestra, even a film, she feeds off the electricalcharge of the connection, improvising with others the way a school of fish moves together in the water. But she has

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to move freely. “Nobody I’ve worked with has ever given me any direction,” she notes. “I’m happy for that, because I don’t take itwell! I have massive authority issues.” Still, Tagaq tends to let her collaborators come to her. “I’m no good at soliciting myself,” she says. “I just hope thatthrough different venues I can find the currents I need to be swimming in, so I can find the right people to collaboratewith. Because collaborations open up a new pattern of thinking, and a whole new flavour to the places I can go withmy voice. You can’t just do it by yourself, you have to be pushed into new areas.” That’s a bit ironic, given that Tagaq does solo throat singing. The traditional Inuit technique involves two womenplaying off each other, using rhythmic breathing and animalistic sounds, and working together so closely that theyoften use each other’s mouth cavities as resonators. It’s a vocal game, a competition not unlike a B-boy hip-hop battle;and, in fact, Tagaq sees a logical connection there. “There’s an interesting thing happening in Nunavut—Inuit kids arestarting to rhyme and beatbox,” she says. “The origins of hip-hop were in the slums, and the whole gangster thing isattributed to the social problems that occur there. And that’s the lifestyle they’re living in Nunavut in a lot of ways.It’s violent, it’s beautiful because it’s real, but it’s a hard way to live. There’s a lot of poverty. I find that it’s from thesekinds of areas that music has arisen, because when you’re in the thick of it, you have to express it.” Although she was raised in the Arctic village of Cambridge Bay, Tagaq did not grow up listening to throat singing,which had been banned by the Catholic church along with the local language, Inuinnaqtun. “Cambridge Bay washeavily affected by residential schools,” she says. “Not a lot of people spoke, or still speak, Inuinnaqtun, and there wasno throat singing. Now, people are starting to use their Inuk names again, but back in the day that wasn’t where itwas at. People thought it was cool to be white. And I can kind of understand it; that’s how colonialism works.” SoTagaq listened to blues, reggae, rock, and pop. “My parents had a record player, and I grew up with Jimi Hendrix,Leonard Cohen, the Doors, the Beatles, Bob Marley—very eclectic tastes for the time in Nunavut. My father lovedmusic, and it was a big part of my life, not that I was ever trained or anything. There was no pressure around it. It wasjust there.” Tagaq, who still doesn’t read music, instead focused on painting, and after going to high school in Yellowknife, headedto Halifax to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Surprisingly, that was where she first heard throatsinging. “My mom sent me tapes with throat singing on them,” she recalls. “The second I heard it, I was just so drawn to it.And I could do it right away. For me, it starts around the collarbone. With all the breath work, it’s a conglomerationbetween flapping your epiglottis and using your nasal cavities along with the deep growling sound. You can eithermake deep sounds going in and out or higher sounds going in and out, or any combination. It’s like sculpting, but withsound.” Perhaps because she had no one to sing with, Tagaq adapted the form to her solo style. “I’ve developed a way ofthroat singing where I make my own songs and sing with myself over layers,” she explains. “Learning to put thosepieces together as if I were singing with someone else is a challenge that I’m happy to have overcome. It’s what I basea lot of my songs on, and someday I hope other throat singers will sing them.” Although throat singing came naturally, Tagaq spent a long time practising in the shower, never around people. “Itwas just something I enjoyed by myself,” she says. “It was never my intention for it to become a career. But I was at afestival showing my paintings, and one of the musical acts didn’t show up. We’d spent the night before drinkingaround the fire, and I’d done some throat singing. The festival director asked me if I could do it on stage, so I did.Björk’s friends happened to be in the audience recording it, and I was whisked off to her world tour. And it wasamazing.” That was the Vespertine tour in 2001, which led to Tagaq contributing to Björk’s 2004 album Medulla; Björk returnedthe favour by appearing on Tagaq’s debut, Sinaa, in 2005. And then the Kronos Quartet came calling. “I was living inLondon, and I did a gig at a pub,” Tagaq recalls. The performance was recorded for fRoots magazine and included on aCD that was heard by Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington. “David said he listened to my singing fifteen times straight,on an airplane, and decided to get hold of me,” Tagaq marvels. Harrington remembers it as more like twenty-five times. “Somewhere over Greenland, her voice magicallyappeared,” he says, during a phone conversation. “What a thrilling, shocking, life-affirming moment! Not only did shesound like many more than one person, but her voice was a centre-of-the-earth, solar-plexus kind of musicalexperience for me. By the time I got home, I knew we had to work together.” Her resulting collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, Nunavut, marked a turning point for Tagaq, as she learned tomove away from pure improvisation and work with the group’s more structured method of creating music. First, thequartet recorded Tagaq singing, and created a compositional structure from her sounds. Then they improvised withher on top of that. For Tagaq, it was a whole new way of working. “It was like reining in a wild horse and going, ‘OK,now run in this direction. Use that energy in this way,’” she explains. “And I forced them out of their comfort zone bymaking them improvise.” Interestingly, the process involved Tagaq thinking of colours and interpreting them. “Thatwas David’s idea,” she says. “We discussed the colours in relation to Nunavut, the seasons, and what was happening.It was through his genius that we were able to concoct this way I could be part of their program while stillimprovising.”

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For Harrington, Tagaq was more than a collaborator; she helped alter the way he thinks about music. “I remembersaying I loved everything she put into her notes,” he recounts. “There was a silence, and then she asked, ‘What is anote?’ And I suddenly realized that I did not really know what a note was, even though for years I had thought I did. SoTanya has been instrumental in helping Kronos continue to ask, ‘What is a musical experience? What are notes?’ “Even though she is one of the most captivating performers I’ve ever heard, Tanya carries no ego-trip baggage. Shehas a pure, fun approach to performance, and she loves to ride the collective wave made by the audience. I can’t waitto perform with her again. Her voice takes us to a primal, sensual, magical aspect of being human—and there is noone like her.”

Tagaq and Kronos worked together again in 2008, on DerekCharke’s Tundra Songs, and she collaborated with Charke on his13 Inuit Throat Song Games (for voice and string orchestra), aswell as the soundtrack to the 1922 film Nanook of the North.Charke, who says he was “blown away” when he first heard Tagaqsing, explains how they worked. “I created the soundscape, usingsounds I recorded in the North, of dogs and birds and the wind,but there’s a form and a shape. Tanya went to the studio first andimprovised to the film. She sent me those improvisations, and Itook them as a guideline for the way she would navigate throughthe score. I manipulated some of her sounds as well. But nothingwas written down for her—the soundscape sounds the same, butshe improvises on top.”

And her performance is different at every screening. “A lot different,” she says. “Sometimes I zone out and don’t lookat it and just go with the flow, and sometimes I respond directly to the visuals, which is exciting. That film is, like,‘Look at these happy Eskimos!’ So it’s fun to freak on it.” Tagaq released two albums after Sinaa, 2008’s Auk/Blood, which was nominated for two Junos and won a CanadianAboriginal Music Award, and 2011’s Anuraaqutug—a live recording of her performance at the 2010 FestivalInternational de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. It seems she has poured everything she’s learned into her newalbum, which features more experiments with structure, more vocal styles and some surprises. “I feel like everyproject’s another step forward,” she says. “It’s a growth process, or what’s the point? I’m getting more into singing—not just throat singing— because I realized at some point that I could. I’ve always relied on throat singing, which is mycomfort zone. But it’s good to push yourself out of the comfort zone sometimes.” Visual art also provides creative expression, but the two artforms never overlap. “They’re not related in any way,”Tagaq says. “I haven’t been satisfied with painting for a long time, because I haven’t had a place to do oil painting. I’veonly been able to work in acrylics, which isn’t my forte. With acrylics it’s more intellectual, and less of a happymistake.” When I ask about her inspirations, Tagaq lists them: “Going home helps. Food is huge. Breakups are great. Watchingthe news is good. For the creative juices, it’s good to be upset about things, and also to love things.” That leads tothe subject of her two daughters, aged ten and two, the younger of whom had a direct influence on her mother’srecent creative work. “Being pregnant and having my baby brought a lot of different ideas,” Tagaq says. “I have ten orfifteen more song ideas, a book idea, writing ideas, a film idea, video ideas, and I’m painting a lot. There are periods ofrest, and periods where you kind of burst forth. It’s like when a sponge gets dry and you put it in the water and let itsoak, and then you have to squeeze it out. I have been soaking for a while!” Last summer Tagaq went into the studio with her band, multi-instrumentalist Jesse Zubot and percussionist JeanMartin, and squeezed it out, improvising most of the new (as-yet-untitled) album. “It’s fun, because we get to go todifferent places,” she says. “I think about my daughters sometimes, and other times I think about something reallyagitating—the darkest part of humanity. It depends on the melody, and what I want to say. I find there’s so much tosay in the world. That’s why I do throat singing, because I want people to be able to relate to the human condition.Everyone’s afraid to die; everyone has their inner battle with their thoughts. The innermost self is beautiful but cruel,because nature itself is unforgiving, and we’re trying to live in this constructed society that doesn’t adhere to therules of nature. I’m sick of the pretense. That’s generally what I’m talking about in my music—trying to tear down thepretense. ’Cause it’s boring.” The new songs set Tagaq’s vocals—delicate, soaring, whimpering, growling—against strings, horns, thumpingpercussion and, on one track, the voice of Belgian opera singer Anna Pardo Canedo, all coming together to create afascinating, gut-wrenching, genre-bending experience. Sometimes she imitates birds or animals; elsewhere she wailswith pain or grunts with pleasure. The hypnotic “Rabbit,” created with her younger daughter in mind, has gentlesounds and ominous horns. The nine-minute “Tulugak” builds slowly toward a triumphant, smashing finish. Tagaqeven reached into indie rock by recording a cover of the Pixies’ “Caribou” (from their 1987 album Come On Pilgrim)and bringing it into the Inuit fold. “The first time I heard that, I thought, ‘Holy fuck! They’re singing about caribou!’ Icouldn’t believe it!” she says. “I love the Pixies, and I love that song. And in the chorus I sing dukdu, which is caribou inInuinnaqtun.” In many ways, the track—both rock song and improvisation—represents the latest chapter in the evolution ofTagaq’s work. “It’s fragmenting,” she says. “It’s going deeper into improvisation, and part of it is going into this more

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structured area. It’s becoming more multifaceted. I’m excited about maybe writing a pop song some day, because Ienjoyed the whole idea of lyrics and chorus. But there’s just so much to do—there’s an unlimited palette of what youcan create.” Tagaq and Kronos’ studio recording of Derek Charke’s Tundra Songs will be included on an album by the ensemble,tentatively slated for release in 2015, and yet to be titled. “It’s totally different from my album,” she says of therecording. “It’s kind of a loose improvisation around Derek’s composition.” At the 2014 Spring for Music Festival atCarnegie Hall, Tagaq will deliver the New York première performance of Charke’s 13 Inuit Throat Song Games as partof the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s concert program of new Canadian compositions. Tagaq may also collaborateon a project with the Winnipeg Ballet. “That’s exciting, because I like the physicality, the movement of the dancealong with the voice,” she says. In the future, she’d like to collaborate with Tom Waits, Yoko Ono and, she says,maybe some Cuban musicians—“anybody whose music seems really alive.” But few people’s music seems quite as alive as Tagaq’s. When she’s performing, she seems to go to a different plane,taking listeners with her. “It feels like I’m a filter,” she says. “The audience is giving me this massive amount ofenergy, and I’m siphoning it through my throat and giving it back. So it’s like a circle. We go somewhere together. Ilike being in that altered state onstage—it’s this really pure state of being. I get to live in the exact moment. It’s likewhen you’re giving birth, eating a great meal, having an orgasm. People look for it in different ways—when they’re ondrugs, or drunk. “There are times when you can shut yourself off so that you’re enjoying your life at that moment. I think that’s kind ofwhat I’m trying to portray in my concerts, this awakening of the true self, of foregoing the ego as much as possible,and that means releasing yourself of physical and spiritual and intellectual confinements. And sometimes I’m actuallyable to let go of my body, which is really lovely.” [FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY.]

Audio: Tulugak. Composed and performed by Tanya Tagaq (voice), Jean Martin (drums, electronics), and JesseZubot (vioin). Photo (Top) and Homepage slider photo: Tanya Tagaq. Photos by: Ivan Otis. Dresses by: FashionCrimes. Photo: Tanya Tagaq performing with film Nanook of the North at Mundial Montreal, November 2013 Photoby: Sean McManus, Courtesy of Manitoba Music.

Mary Dickie is a Toronto music and arts journalist whose work has been published in a variety of differentpublications over the past couple of decades, including Impact, Eye Weekly, Maclean’s, ELLE Canada, The TorontoSun, FASHION magazine and IN Toronto. She is also a member of the Polaris Music Prize jury.

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Tulugak 00:00 / 08:44 Musicworks CD 118

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Tuesday » June24 » 2014

Reclaiming Nanook of the NorthTanya Tagaq lends vocals to infamous film Liz NichollsEdmonton Journal

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

PREVIEW

Nanook of the North/Tanya Tagaq concert

Theatre: Workshop West, Alberta Aboriginal Arts Starring: Tanya Tagaq, CrisDerksen, Jean Martin

Where: Metro Cinema at the Garneau Theatre, 8712 109th St.

Running: Thursday Tickets: 780­477­5955, workshopwest.org

She's collaborated with some of the world's most adventurous artists. She's touredand recorded with the unclassifiable Icelander Bjork; she's jammed in concert withSan Francisco hipster avantgardists the Kronos Quartet, and the Edinburgh Celticfusion band Shooglenifty. Beatbox and hip­hop artistes, orchestral players, spokenword poets, rappers show up on her albums.

The most daring, even contradictory, collaboration of all, perhaps, is the one thatbrings the Nunavut artist Tanya Tagaq to Edmonton's Canoe Festival Thursday, aspart of a five­city crosscountry tour.

It pairs the world's most famously innovat ive practitioner of the ancient art ofInuk throat­singing with the world's most famous, and infamous, film aboutindigenous people: Robert Flaherty's 1922 silent pseudo­documentary Nanook ofthe North.

During the screening Tagaq improvises vocally, along with cellist Cris Derkson andpercussionist Jean Martin, and a Derek Charke

soundscore with Tagaq's own vocal sound­making as a backing track.

Through breath and sound they channel the landscape, the light, the animals andbirds, wind and water, and the emotional soul of the northern family whose livesunfold in striking images ­ and racial stereotypes ­ in the now­controversial film.

Tagaq, a droll and engagingly candid conversationalist, calls it "enjoying thevisuals and adding the sonic dimension ­ applying the movie to the sound, or viceversa." This unusual act of artistic reclamation, she explains, wasn't her idea; itwas originally commissioned by the Toronto Film Festival in 2012.

"I'd seen (Nanook of the North) as a child, and saw it again only then, as anadult," says the Cambridge Bay, Nunavut native on the phone last week from herhome in Brandon, Man., where her boyfriend is in the military.

The rub on Flaherty's film, which charts the life of Nanook and his family in

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northern Quebec, isn't that it's negative about Inuk culture, exactly.

It's that the optic is inauthentic: white, 1922, and racially clichéd andcondescending. "It really portrays what life was like, the struggle," Tagaqconcedes. "But it's the spectacle of the noble savage, the happy Eskimostereotype. ... "I'm so proud of my ancestry, the way they carved their survival,the harshness. It's unbelievable. Edmonton knows what cold is. But when we grewup, Edmonton was The South ... I (experience) the film with a mixture of pride,pride in my ancestors, and anger, the anger of seeing their life through 1922glasses. And the contradiction plays itself out in the sound."

She pauses to reflect. "Maybe contradiction is human. We're operating onstereotypes on an individual basis; it's what you want to show people of yourself,your private self." Tagaq laughs.

"The older I get, the less I (automatically) say 'fine!' when people ask how it'sgoing ... It's part of the reason I do music. It's a common denominator. We all gothrough trials and tribulations, no matter who we are ­ heartbreak or sadness, joyor appreciation of life."

Tagaq says that her throat singing "isn't traditional in any sense." "I'm a naturaldissenter," she laughs. "And I was a weird kid, ask anyone I went to elementaryschool with ... I felt a little misplaced in the world; I only found comfort in art."When she discovered throat singing, she says, "I was already expressing myself inpainting and writing."

Tagaq didn't grow up with throat singing. "I never heard it, really ... My family,originally from Pond Inlet, moved to Cambridge Bay when I was quite young."There was no high school in Cambridge Bay, so Tagaq went to a residential schoolin Yellowknife, and then on to Halifax, the Nova Scotia College of Art. "I washurting, missing home. So my mom sent me tapes of throat singers. It struck me!I could hear the land in it."

A throat singer, a selftaught one, was born ­ in the shower. "It was me messingaround with my voice, like people playing around with paint," Tagaq sayscheerfully. "It was just something that called ... I can't read music, or (identify)pitch or tone. And I've chosen not to research it."

Traditional throat singing, katajjaq, has two women facing each other in acall/response faceoff. "So beautiful," says Tagaq, "and kind of a stamina game,originally a competition ... It was the coolest sound I'd ever heard. But I had nopartner." So Tagaq, a natural radical, contemporized, both in technique andpartnerships with other modern artists. Any break with tradition createscontroversy. "People were angry with me; I've had death threats ... Wheneverthings get changed, there's always backlash. And our culture has gone throughsuch massive changes."

"I don't try to sound pretty," says Tagaq. "I want my music to be a commentaryon what life is like now, being a human, a woman, an Inuk, problems withgovernment and how they treat people and problems with my own people and howthey treat each other ..." She has strong views about the weirdness of affluencealongside "people starving for lack of food every day, and about sexual puritanismand the way it squelches people's natural capacity for joy. "It blows my mind!That's why I sing, throat singing and sing singing," says Tagaq, who has an album,yet unnamed, out in May.

Meanwhile there's the Nanook tour that has taken Tagaq from Halifax throughToronto, now on to the prairies for two stops, and finally Vancouver's prestigiousPuSH Festival ­ or, as she puts it, "lobster, Italian, steak, steak, seafood again."

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And with her comes a kind of film/concert, with improvised music that's "jazz withno rules, and also very punk. It's liberating; it doesn't have a genre ... I've evendebated doing a heavy­metal album. But some nights, when I'm in a peacefulzone, it can be lullabies. If you like very safe, if you don't like strange, don'tcome."

lnicholls@edmontonjournal. com

© Edmonton Journal 2014

Copyright © 2014 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

6/24/2014 Review: Tanya Tagaq’s Take on “Nanook of The North” | Sound + Noise

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Review: Tanya Tagaq’s Take on “Nanook ofThe North”

February 10, 2014 · by DFalk · in Concert Review, Film Review, Performance Review. ·

I am siting in the balcony of the Garneau Theatre on a cold January thirtieth. There is a movieplaying but I haven’t looked at the screen for the last minute. My eyes are firmly fixed onmodern throat singer and vocal improviser Tanya Tagaq and her two partners in crime (CrisDerksen on cello and Jean Martin on drums) as they re-soundtrack all seventy eight minutes ofNanook of the North. Robert Flaherty’s 1922 silent film set the bar for documentaries, and yet stillgot it almost all wrong.

The film opens with a short preface by the filmmaker stating that Nanook is “the brave, kindly,simple Eskimo.” Nanook, despite being “brave” and “kindly”, is portrayed as one-dimensional and simple-minded. A particularly lingering scene plays out with Nanook and his

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family at the outpost of a Quebec fur trader, where they are particularly amused by the man’sgramophone and how it enables “the white man to can his voice.” The image is of one of asimple, exotic people who marvel at the sophisticate’s power – they are amused by technology,but surely they do not understand it. The sequence ends with the description of “some ofNanook’s children are banqueted by the trader – sea biscuit and lard! But Allegoo indulged toexcess, so the trader sends for castor oil.” Again, the Eskimo, the Other, can partake of this newworld, but the white man is the enlightened one, the saviour.

In an updated version of the film available on Youtube, all of this plays out to a nice upbeatorchestral score. Tonight in the Garneau Theatre, the trader’s gramophone is given a new songto play. The score is - hypnotic mix of avante garde and traditional, with only one Englishword spoken throughout the whole set: “colonizer, colonizer, colonizer.”

“I was embarrassed when I first saw the movie,” Tagaq explained in her brief introduction. “Iresented the depiction of a “happy Eskimo”. Not because I’m not a happy Eskimo, because Iam. But I think that there is more to the story than just being simple.” That story includesissues of land rights, environmental protection, poverty, a legacy of systematic oppression andracism – things that aren’t simple.

“The church in the colonies is a white man’s Church, a foreigner’s Church. It does not call thecolonized to the ways of God, but to the ways of the white man, to the ways of the master, theways of the oppressor.” That’s a quote from post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wretched_of_the_Earth) that perhaps best describes myfeelings of the concert better than any adjectives describing the music. Though Nanook of theNorth never deals explicitly with Christianity or any ‘religious’ context, it removes the Inuitpeoples from their own stories, myths, and histories. Instead, the film presents them as how thecolonizer sees and wants them to be seen, as a primitive, exotic, quaint people. But thisdepiction took major liberties with the truth. By the time Flaherty’s lens had turned northward,Inuit culture had long since begun to incorporate western style of dress and methods ofhunting, and yet the filmmakers chose to have them act out their way of life using spears andprimitive tools. It isn’t an accident that the stereotype of the “noble savage” was furtherperpetuated.

Criticisms such as these oftentimes will be dismissed by some as “it was another time”, or“film is deceiving”, but what was and is inherently problematic is that this exotic dramatizationwas presented as real, lived experience of the Inuit. The fact is that the film portrayals of thelives of these people are so far from reality that there is no way one can call the ita “documentary”. The namesake of the film wasn’t even actually named Nanook; his name wasAllakariallak.

This lead to an idea to reclaim the Nanook and its portrayal of Inuit culture by re-examining thefilm with a new voice guiding us through it. Tanya Tagaq’s live score goes from loud andintensely disorienting, strange and trance-like, to minimal, soft, haunting and beautiful. It wasso emotionally driven and different from any concert I’ve attended before that to employ thelist of adjectives I just used seems a little dishonest. It was an experience that I’ve never

6/24/2014 Review: Tanya Tagaq’s Take on “Nanook of The North” | Sound + Noise

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encountered before, and every attempt I’ve made in the last few days to describe it to peoplehas ended up sounding flat and hollow. It stays with and within you, something whichI’ve concluded may be the most beautiful part of the performance.

Tagaq created a new framework which gave the audience a chance to re-engage and to breakthe stereotype – a chance to recognize the film for what it was and how it was made, and notwhat it was pretending to portray. This was the ultimate triumph of Tanya Tagaq’sperformance. Tagaq turned the film into an opportunity for Inuit people to reclaim theiridentity and tell their own story. From where I sat in the theatre, for a few fleeting moments,perhaps for the first time, Nanook of the North seemed real, raw, and yes, honest.

David Falk

Tags: Avante Garde, Canoe Theatre Festival, Cris Derksen, Jean Martin, Metro Cinema at theGarneau, Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty, Tanya Tagaq, Throat singing

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6/24/2014 Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq on reclaiming Nanook of the North - Aboriginal - CBC

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Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq on reclaimingNanook of the NorthBy Holly Gordon, CBC Music, CBC News Posted: Jan 25, 2014 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: Jan 25, 20141:28 PM ET

Tanya Tagaq doesn't mince words. Asked about her impressions of Nanook of the North, a 1922 silent filmby American Robert Flaherty depicting Inuk Nanook and his family in northern Quebec, the Inuk throatsinger from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, gets to the point.

"They put a bunch of bullshit happy Eskimo stereotypes, you know what I mean?" she says, with a loudlaugh.

Tagaq recognizes that Flaherty had a love for Inuit, and says the film does show the incredible resiliency ofher ancestors. But, it's a film by a non-Inuit man depicting the traditions of the North; Tagaq considers it afilm as seen through "1922 goggles."

PLAYLIST: Tanya Tagaq music samplerVisit CBC Aboriginal5 top aboriginal albums

In 2012, Tagaq finally got an opportunity to add a 21st-century filter to the out-of-date classic when theToronto International Film Festival commissioned her to create a soundscape to accompany Nanook of theNorth, as part of the festival's film retrospective First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition. Alongwith composer Derek Charke, percussionist Jean Martin and violinist Jesse Zubot, Tagaq created andperformed the soundscape at the 2012 TIFF.

''There are moments in the movie where … my ancestors, they’re so amazing...Growing up inNunavut and just the harshness of the environment itself, the ability for people to be able tosurvive with no vegetation, and just the harshest of environments, it’s just incredible to me. I’mvery proud of my ancestors.- Tanya Tagaq

When the performance was over, she wasn't prepared to let it go. "I just didn’t want to stop doing it, sowe’ve now got permission and we’re touring it, which I’m very, very happy about," says the singer, whohas worked with both Björk and the Kronos Quartet.

Tagaq kicked off a four-show tour of Canada yesterday, in Halifax, after performing Nanook three times inNew York City earlier this month.

To describe her simply as a "throat singer" doesn't quite do Tagaq's unique talent justice. The performanceis a visceral one: primal sounds, husky breathing and evocative vocal tricks all bring a beautiful balance tothe film.

6/24/2014 Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq on reclaiming Nanook of the North - Aboriginal - CBC

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CBC Music caught up with Tagaq over the phone before she returned to Halifax, which is actually herundergrad stomping ground (Tagaq attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design when she was firstdeveloping her style of singing). She talked about reclaiming Nanook as a modern Inuk woman, and takingout her frustrations over stereotypes vocally.

You were commissioned to do this project for TIFF in 2012. Are you pushing it forward now withthis iteration?

It’s the same thing but it’s also different every time because of improvising with my band. We have abeautiful backing track composed by Derek Charke, and he is a brilliant composer and I was really lucky tobe able to work with him. And how we did that was, I watched the film four times, and responded vocallyand composed my own melodies and stuff like that to the film. And then sent that all off to Derek and hetook that and put field recordings over it from Nunavut. And he processed my voice and it’s just a reallynice kind of bed that we get to, like a sonic bed we get to lay on while we’re improvising on top of it. It’sfun.

You said you thought the movie was perfect to work with. How so?

'It’s really nice because I can take my frustrations of stereotypes all over the world and take thatenergy and put it in sonically. I reclaim the film.'- Tanya Tagaq

There are moments in the movie where … my ancestors, they’re so amazing. They lived on the land and Ijust still can’t believe that. Growing up in Nunavut and just the harshness of the environment itself, theability for people to be able to survive with no vegetation, and just the harshest of environments, it’s justincredible to me. I’m very proud of my ancestors.

So that’s one facet of it, but I’m a natural presenter, like I went to arts school, so I watched it and I was justlike, "They put a bunch of bullshit happy Eskimo stereotypes," you know what I mean?

So I can respond to that as well, with finding some hardcore punk, kind of that feel, kind of put that soundall over it to make it clear. It’s really nice because I can take my frustrations of stereotypes all over the worldand take that energy and put it in sonically. I reclaim the film. Even though I have no doubt in my mind that

6/24/2014 Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq on reclaiming Nanook of the North - Aboriginal - CBC

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Robert Flaherty had a definite love for Inuit and the land, it’s through 1922 goggles. It’s just nice to be amodern woman, well modern Inuk woman, taking it back.

You said you first saw the film when you were a kid, was that through school?

I think so, yeah.

Do you remember anything about how you felt when you saw it that first time?

I remember being really, really embarrassed and annoyed when he was biting on the record [there's a scenewhere Nanook laughs at a phonograph and bites on a record, as if he's never seen one before]. And therewere a couple of scenes like that where I’m embarrassed and annoyed. Like I said, that’s why it’s great tosing over it.

I read that the record-biting scene was fake, too.

Yeah, like, “Look at these savage people that have no idea what this is, oh isn’t that funny, they don’tknow.” And it’s like yeah, why don’t we take someone living in England and put them on the land andlaugh at them for dying in the cold? “Oh, he’s being eaten by a bear.”

I haven’t seen the show but I’ve watched a couple of clips and it’s breathtaking what you’re able todo. But it also looks exhausting, because it’s so emotional and so physical. How do you go through allof that in one show?

I find it’s quite a lot, it’s very cathartic for me. And it depends on the night. Like if I’m in a calm place andmy babies are all happy and everything’s great and my family’s all healthy and everything’s well andeverything feels really calm and good, sometimes the show can just be very … like a soft wind, and it canbe more melodies and more humming and a bit of … it can be very calm. So it’s just when I’m tired orwhen I don’t have that fire under my ass, it can be quite pretty. And that, to me, has equal reverence in myheart and in my life and expression. There’s always the extrovert you that is out conversing with people, butthere’s the one with the reading glasses reading a book, and I think it goes to all places in my performance.

And it is exhausting, though; traditional throat songs are quite short. But sometimes it’s like when youstarted running and you’ve been running an hour and you just stop feeling like you’re running. It’s kind oflike that sometimes with the show.

... I know what I’m doing. I’ve been accused of making music for musicians. It’s not palatable foreveryone, and it doesn’t bother me … I’m not trying to please people. If you came and thought it was shit, itprobably wouldn’t bother me.

I don’t think that would happen.

You never know. I like really weird things.

To find out more about Tanya Tagaq check out CBC Music

CBC Music

Tanya Tagaq | Video & Sound Tanya Tagaq on Q with Jian Ghomeshi: video and audio (and text) mostly on her new album release, Animism, career, and background (2014) Nanook of the North video preview: the video embedded in attached articles Sounds of throat singing: Tanya talks about and demonstrates technique of throat singing