The Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq makes music that seems to cleanse the body. The form that she practices uses guttural sounds and breaths to produce a physical performance of groans, gasps, and sighs, conjuring a sonic landscape which is by turns rhythmic and melodic. Her performing, at once animalistic and operatic, brings a spirit of experimentation to an old tradition: in the course of her career, Tagaq, an advocate for Indigenous rights and cultural practices, has updated the exercise to include drums, electronica, and even spoken-word poetry. It is her technique and vision that have made her one of the most celebrated and innovative practitioners of her culture’s visceral style.
The tradition of Inuit throat singing originated as a playful contest between women. Usually, two performers face each other, each holding the other’s arms and generating sounds that mimic nature—grunts, squeals, squawks, coos, and crows—for the other to answer. The game ends when one person laughs or runs out of breath. Tagaq, who was born to an Inuit family in Nunavut, didn’t grow up practicing the form. (The severance of ties between Indigenous people and their communities and traditions is a major theme in her music and life.) When Tagaq’s family was moved to the settlement at Cambridge Bay during her childhood, she felt pressured to assimilate; other kids discouraged speaking Inuktitut, an Inuit language. It wasn’t until she was in her twenties, and in university, that her mother introduced her to throat singing—which, Tagaq has said, “woke up [her] bones.” Solo and self-taught, Tagaq has spent her music career blending the traditional form with sounds from contemporary music.
Tagaq first became known internationally for appearing on several songs from Björk’s 2004 album, “Medúlla,” which was primarily performed a cappella. She made her solo début in 2005, with “Sinaa,” a largely unadorned exhibition of melodic throat singing. Tagaq’s music took an explicitly political turn in the twenty-tens, starting with “Animism,” the 2014 album that won her Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize. (Her competitors included Drake and Arcade Fire.) The songs on “Animism” displayed the potency and range of throat singing, punctuating Tagaq’s vocals with clicking drums and disquieting strings. The record crossed folk music, electronic music, and ambient noise in an exploration of environmental conservation. “Retribution,” from 2016, explored the harm that humans have wreaked upon the earth, and upon one another—and issued warning for the impending consequences. “Our mother grows angry / Retribution will be swift,” she cautions on the title track. These days, her music is more concerned with renewal than revenge. Tagaq’s new album, “Tongues,” pushes deeper into lyricism than any of her previous releases did, balancing the chant-like reflexivity of throat singing with detail-driven storytelling.
“Tongues” pulls poems from Tagaq’s 2018 book, “Split Tooth,” which draws upon her personal history and Inuit folklore. The book, which is dedicated to missing and murdered Indigenous girls, and survivors of the residential-school system, is a loosely true narrative of her life story. With the written word as its guide, “Tongues” ruminates on Inuit life, colonial interference, language, sexual abuse, and personal and communal healing. There is a tangibility to Tagaq’s writing, which draws upon wildlife imagery: peeling the skin off an animal to honor sacrifice, or biting into the windpipe of a predator, like a mother protecting its cub. On “Earth Monster,” a song she wrote for her daughter, Tagaq fixates on physical details—twitchy eyes, a wet mouth, hips and patella, flesh and bones, shared fluids—and how they bond the two together. Across the nine tracks, a poignant arc of loss and restoration comes to life.
On “Tongues,” Tagaq places a greater emphasis on spoken-word verse than she has in previous records. Here, she creates a precise interplay of speech and sound—at some points, she dips between the two modes, and at others, she treats her words as vehicles for her abstract utterances. Songs such as “Colonizer” and the title track feature piercingly direct commentary, and the clanging instrumentation tinges the album with a punk sensibility. In the album’s most moving moments, Tagaq’s spoken affirmations about personal rehabilitation turn into a kind of proto-rap. She strings out phrases with repetition, and underscores certain words with phonetic force. Tagaq’s inflections and articulations become nearly spellbinding on “Do Not Fear Love.” “Reap, eat, chew, swallow, devour / all the goodness and love that is given to you,” she recites, her voice rising and ebbing in its intensity. The sounds of the throat singing have their own artful quality: each and every noise that comes out of Tagaq’s mouth is deliberate and expressive. When she utters consonants, on “Teeth Agape,” it is as if she is baring fangs.
Every element of the album is made to complement Tagaq’s vocals, but the beats here are more than just set dressing. Produced by the radical multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams and mixed by the d.j. Gonjasufi, the tracks provide a buzzing undercurrent of electronics that turns analog performance into inventive digital music. If throat singing is meant to be a two-person exchange, the production often seems to simulate the second participant, with deep tones and intense beat patterns. On songs such as “Birth” and “Nuclear,” Tagaq’s howls and screeches seem to nestle in the thickets of manipulated sound. But even her nonverbal displays always speak volumes.
