Primal sounds with a modern message

Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq's guttural, wordless throat-singing draws extreme audience responses, from angry walkouts to the emotional release of crying. Photo / Supplied

When the Canadian Inuit woman who goes by the name of Tagaq opens her mouth - to sing or to speak out about what she believes in - people tend to listen.

Tanya Tagaq Gillis from remote Cambridge Bay (pop 1500) draws on the tradition of Inuit throat-singing but her guttural, wordless sounds conjure up powerful emotions for her diverse audiences, which range from hip downtown New Yorkers when she performs with the Kronos Quartet, to those at world music festivals where she sometimes performs solo or with an electric band.

In March, she will be at Womad Taranaki with a DJ and a violinist, and will doubtless divide the audience.

"I love it when people get all mad and walk out because they hate it," she laughs.

"Or when they love it. I don't like it in the middle. My nightmare is the response, 'Oh isn't that a quaint little Eskimo'. I'd rather they dislike it."

What Tagaq delivers is a sound which can touch on animal noises, primal therapy or the soothing tones which one might use to calm a crying baby. Often all within the same improvised piece.

She has performed and recorded with Bjork, taken her singular sound to 30 countries and still lives in Yellowknife, where she first explored throat-singing while at university.

Tagaq lives in many worlds: she has killed caribou and rails against those who would deny her people the right to hunt seals.

She plays sold-out concerts in big cities and small halls, and her distinctive sound provokes profound responses: some are reduced to tears.

"Sometimes after shows I have people I have to hold and tell them it'll be okay because they're crying so hard. Whatever you need to be feeling, whatever you're pushing away, that's what I hope to draw out, because it's the only way you fix things.

"If your front step is creaky you don't keep stepping over it until it falls off. Fix it."

But if people come to her for answers, she admits she has none.

"It's all inside them. That's the most rewarding thing to me, that my music opened up a little part in someone that was closed, and by that opening and starting that trickle flowing their quality of life could be improved.

"I like using music for healing and I don't have to use words so people get that I'm trying to open up thought patterns and ways of thinking, and getting in touch with instincts.

"If you don't know yourself, how can you move forward? I've met people who have never been on the land in their whole life and have been living in this jail society has constructed, which is ridiculous, because people feel lost.

"I am in my own way too, but I hope I can unify people and feel them lighten. If I can spread a bit of goodness, that's what I feel I must do."

As much as her music has made people take notice, so too has her unofficial role in defending traditional Inuit practices such as seal and whale hunting, and speaking out about the plight of her people as a result of colonialism. But she doesn't get hung up on the small stuff.

"If I'm in Canada and someone uses the word 'Eskimo' I won't get mad. Some people have taken it upon themselves to get up in everyone's faces about the tiniest little thing. Like, I don't give a shit about Eskimo Pies. I ate them. Why would you care?

"Let's start with your home and make it not okay to beat your wife. Let's work on that and not care if some corporation 50 years ago started making Eskimo Pies. There are the Edmonton Eskimos [football club] here in Canada, nobody is freakin' out over that."

And she rails against do-gooders who would adopt a position against seal hunting and whaling by Inuits when there are bigger problems.

"There are only 27,000 Inuit people. Seals are like cows to us, their population is more than there ever was - but for some reason dip-shit Paul McCartney decides it's bad to kill seals. Protest McDonald's, protest something that's hurting people.

"It's like [Inuit people] have to pay for what other people have done to the planet, and it's because we're small enough to be picked on. Seal skin is great, it's waterproof and warm, it's gorgeous. It's also delicious," she laughs.

"If I get one more vegetarian tell me there's no culture on the planet that needs to eat meat! Look, there's no trees, it's frozen 10 months of the year and today it's minus 64 in Cambridge Bay, my hometown - without the wind chill. What are you gonna do? Grow vegetables?"

And if the mouthy, funny and blunt Tagaq won't be closed down in the political discussion, nor will she be when it comes to where she might take her extraordinary music.

"The sounds I make are so strange they attract people that want to hear and feel something different. But my taste can range from music which is totally vapid and fun to stuff that is pushing the envelope more. I like dance music sometimes - and metal and punk. I just haven't got around to doing those genres yet."


Womad Festival

Who: Canadian Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq

Where and when: Womad, New Plymouth, March 18-20