Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq tops Drake, Arcade Fire to win 2014 Polaris Music Prize
She speaks hard truths, and though her music is far from easy listening, Nunavut throat singer Tanya Tagaq has the country's attention. Last night, she won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize for her album Animism, beating out Canadian competitors like Drake and Arcade Fire.
"It felt calm when it happened but I'm getting excited now," Tagaq tells CBC Radio's As It Happens host Carol Off of her win. "I think it won't be until I'm sitting at home in Manitoba, cooking for my daughters and my family, that I'll really start jumping up and down."
"To be totally honest, I think that they're just excited to hear something that they've never heard before," she says about why she beat out higher profile competition for the prize. "Traditional throat singing is done with two women and it's not typically... improvised. I think what we're doing in sense of improvisation is very strong."
Many of the songs on Animism were improvisational.
"There are a couple of songs on the album that are one take, untouched improvisation," she says. "Other tracks on the album have a little bit of embellishment, and some have a lot. There's a full spectrum and I think that's what makes things interesting. Like if you're sitting down for a meal and you have different foods with different flavours and different consistencies, it kind of excites the palette. I think we had a good spectrum of preconceived notions and pure improvisation within the album."
During her performance, her political message was front and centre. She performed in front of a screen rolling a long list of names of murdered and missing Aboriginal women.
"As an indigenous woman myself, I've been watching women, girls, children, old ladies, men too... being hurt, being abused, being raped, being hit, being beaten and being murdered," she explains of why she included the murdered and missing women wall in her performance.
"And people are getting away with it. Society uses a lot of stereotypes and backwards thinking without understanding that the socio-economic crisis we're in is a direct result of the effects of colonialism. To right wrongs, they need to be acknowledged. People also like to think that [the only missing and murdered people are those] who work in the sex trade, but it's not. It's our children, it's our mothers, it's our sisters."
"She was doing her thesis on missing and murdered indigenous women and I can't even take that that happened," Tagaq says. "She's Inuk, she went to university in Halifax; I went into university in Halifax. Basically, I felt like she's me when that happened.
"It's scary. It's feels like somebody's hunting us. Me and my daughters are four times more likely to be murdered in this country. I don't feel like that's acceptable in any way and whatsoever."
While accepting her award, Tagaq also encouraged everyone to wear and eat seal as much as possible.
"It shouldn't be inconceivable that an indigenous group of people could thrive off their own sustainable natural resources," she explains in a portion of the interview that didn't air. "I think that it's ridiculous and bullying... To be against sealing is basically taking food out of Inuit kids' mouths. We were doing well financially and breaking free from the federal government before people started all these ridiculous bans... and just the hypocrisy of there being giant slaughterhouses everywhere and the state of the climate... but you're gonna go out to your wit's end over some seals?
"A lot of people don't understand the quality of life and the respect and the meat that we are as humans. We are not separate from animals. The way we treat animals as Inuit people, we wouldn't over hunt them. That's not how we do things. It's called living in harmony with the earth."
