Tagaq Sinaa CD

In just six short years, groundbreaking Inuk throat singer, Tanya Tagaq Gillis, has brought an ancient Inuit vocal game to the heights of the experimental music scene. She’s collaborated with Bjork and the Kronos Quartet and toured with some of the world’s leading “global” artists. Like Bjork, Tagaq makes music that is both decidedly unusual and universally appealing on a most primal level. Her innovative, solo style of throat singing seeks to push the boundaries of emotion and to express the primitive instincts she believes still reside deep within our flesh. She describes her evolution over the past six years as a process of going deeper and deeper into her performance to the point where she virtually “leaves her body” and lets the expression take over.Tagaq’s new CD, Sinaa (say “sih-NAA”), displays her technique through a collection of original improvisations and three traditional Inuk throat songs. Most of the time, Tagaq’s voice is the only instrument, communicating the emotion of the piece through a stunning array of sounds: aggressive grunts and growls, frantic gasping rhythms and ecstatic, high pitched wails…sometimes layered over additional beds of moans and sighs. Four songs also feature the tribal sounding beats of the txalaparta (say “cha-la-PAR-ta”), traditional Basque percussion provided by Tagaq’s partner, Filipe Ugarte and his duo, Ugarte Anaiak. On “Ancestors,” a duet with Bjork, a touch of piano provides the backdrop as Bjork’s sweet, shrill vocalizations intertwine with Tagaq’s provocative throat sounds.It’s a far cry from traditional throat singing, which is neither an emotional art form nor the work of a solo artist. Conventionally, throat singing is done by pairs of women who stand face to face and create rhythms out of the sounds made with their breath and vocal chords. One leads and the other fills in the gaps in her rhythm until one gives in to laughter or exhaustion. The only similarity to Tagaq’s work is the sounds themselves, which often emulate sounds from nature like animals or the wind.Though Tagaq grew up in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, she had little exposure to the centuries old art form. It wasn’t ...