Tagaq gives Iqaluit delayed, defiant and ‘freaky’ show
IQALUIT— Tanya Tagaq is not one to back down from a challenge, even one issued by Mother Nature herself.
It did appear for a time this past Saturday that the vocal minority opposed to this weekend’s performance by the Inuk vocal powerhouse and provocatrice in Iqaluit might actually get its way and see the concert abandoned, not because Tagaq would cave to the haters accusing her of selling out her own Inuit culture through the modernization of the unique art of throat singing (and, in some cases, actively making threats on her life) but because the weather had ideas of its own.
It takes more than a freak blizzard to silence Tanya Tagaq, however. So when the unseasonable blast of snow that shut down Iqaluit on Saturday forced the cancellation of her show that evening at Inuksuk High School, hasty arrangements were made to rebook flights and juggle other obligations, and to make damn sure that the Cambridge Bay native’s first show in Nunavut since becoming a Polaris Music Prize winner and the world’s most visible Inuk musician did happen. And, man, did it happen.
Even by Tagaq’s confrontational standards, this was a beast. Tagaq was flanked, as usual, by her impro- visationally attuned sidemen/collaborators Jesse Zubot on violin and electronics, and Jean Martin on percussion and more electronics, plus recent addition Christine Duncan on theremin and backing vocals, and Inuk performance artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory stalking the stage as a face-painting foil to Tagaq’s flailing theatrics. The diminutive avant-gardist basically issued one long, open musical challenge to her naysayers.
“We’re alive at the same time as every other culture. We can be anything we want. We can be doctors, lawyers,” she said during the preamble to the show, presented by the local Alianait festival but also unofficially one of the highlights of the inaugural Nunavut Music Week.
“So this is some contemporary music we’re gonna play for you right now.
“I have never, ever said that what I’m doing is traditional throat singing. This is not traditional. This is contemporary. . . . Our show is contemporary and I just do whatever I feel like and it can get really freaky. If you don’t like it, see that sign right there (reading) ‘Exit’? Feel free to leave.”
With that line drawn in the sand — or, more accurately, the snow — Tagaq let Laakkuluk kick things off with a lengthy, surrealist folk tale about untrammelled sexual fantasies and unintentional incest while the band patiently worked up an unearthly crescendo of ambient sound behind her before the star hitched up her sealskin gown and assumed her battle stance, unleashing a torrent of gasps, grunts and screams from her formidable pipes and rocketing the Inuksuk foyer into the netherworld. Meanwhile, to Tagaq’s right, Laakkuluk gradually applied layers of makeup to her face until it was a leering black fright mask and began pacing about the stage in contortionist slow motion, pausing occasionally to lock arms in a hyper-sexualized throat-singing stance with Tagaq, before venturing out into the crowd to stare down individual patrons one on one.
Tagaq and her band’s music — placid glacial soundscapes one second, skronking nightmare freejazz or booming slow-mo 4/4 techno the next — is designed to make you as uncomfortable as the (mostly) wordless tales of cultural genocide, rape and environmental degradation contained therein should make you feel, but Laakkuluk’s presence in the lineup has added a whole level of physical discomfort to the proceedings. At one point, a woman literally ran screaming into the wings from the audience when Laakkuluk advanced on her.
She would leave minutes later. And she wasn’t alone in heading for that exit.
An overwhelming majority stayed, though. And, as is always the case with a Tanya Tagaq performance, it was over before you knew it, winding down from its roiling peaks after about an hour to a breathless finale that found her and Laakkuluk entwined in each other’s legs on the floor, exchanging the guttural exhalations of old-school throat singing through a single microphone until the lights came up and everyone in the room was finally able to catch a breath again.
Every Tagaq show is different, but every Tagaq show has one thing in common: They transport you out of time. They’re so completely transfixing that one emerges with the feeling of waking from a dream. She’s one of the most unique artists on the planet, and a trail-blazing ambassador for the continuing evolution of Inuit culture in the face of centuries of Western suppression and assimilation. In her hands, it is very much alive and kicking.
She got a standing ovation for her troubles.