by MATTHEW WOODLEY

At one point, as the story goes, during her last year studying painting in Halifax, Tanya Tagaq’s mother sent her a tape from her home in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut (popution: 1,300, weather: cold, culture: not so Scotian). The tape was traditional Iniut throat singing, an ancient vocal game between two women, who stand face to face, improvising back and forth in layers of rhythmic grunts, gasps, sighs and wails until one falls out of step, giving in to laughter, maybe running out breath. She emulated the sounds, a cure for homesickness and a longing for a piece of where she came from.

Her first performance was at a Cambridge Bay talent contest with a friend who was also learning the technique. It was broadcast on the radio. Someone listening in Yellowknife was invited her to perform at the folk festival there, other fests ensued. One of these (where she initially went to exhibit her paintings and ended up on stage because they were short of performers) happened to have a couple of Björk’s Icelandic friends in the audience. A year later, Tagaq was on stage with Björk on her Vespertine tour, to appear on both her subsequent recordings, fusing her voice with other sounds and having single-handedly given a brand new life what we should appreciate as a truly Canadian tradition. Right?

“Well, it’s weird,” says Tagaq, who can now also boast performing with the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall. “Overseas, if I tell people I’m Inuit, they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry what happened to your people, you all got your land taken away...’ They really see it in a different light, whereas in Canada it doesn’t really feel like it’s something people talk about.”

It’s not that Tagaq’s music is political, but more a bafflement as to why that topic is so often avoided in one of the most multicultural countries in the world. Tagaq’s mother is Inuit, her father white, her two-year-old daughter speaks English, Basque, some Inuktitut and a little Spanish for good measure. Her ex-boyfriend, Felipe Ugarte, plays an ancient Basque instrument called the txalaparta, with which two people improvise off each other hitting something like an old-school xylophone. See the similarity? And like Björk, Felipe Ugarte performs on Tagaq’s most recent album, Sinaa.

But, as with all improvisation, Tagaq comes off best live, finding other things to feed off with the absence of another throat singer. “It totally depends on the audience, and if I can feel them collectively,” she says. “It’s a challenge, and one I love. Sometimes everyone’s really enthusiastic and I go nuts, and sometimes people are really quiet and I’m shy and I keep my eyes closed and don’t move around much.

“I really believe in instinct. I believe that people have a lot of instinct and knowledge inside themselves that’s been completely smoothed over by concrete. You know how you know when someone’s lying? Or our instincts for killing or for love, i think a lot of that’s buried and what I’m trying to do is shake that open and culturally if it makes people more aware too, then that’s cool, but it’s not my main drive. I try to think that when I’m singing it hits people on an individual level, that it opens up something there.”

With Kinnie Starr at the Main Hall Friday, Sept. 22, 8 p.m., $15

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