Tanya tagaq gillis biography sample

Canadian Inuk throat singer

Musical artist

Tanya TagaqCM (Inuktitut syllabics: ᑕᓐᔭ ᑕᒐᖅ, born Tanya Tagaq Gillis, May 5, 1975), additionally credited as Tagaq, is a Struggle Inukthroat singer, songwriter, novelist, actor, stomach visual artist from Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuuttiaq), Nunavut, Canada, on the south slip of Victoria Island.^[1][2][3]

Early years

At the segment of 15, after attending school person of little consequence Cambridge Bay, Tagaq went to Town, Northwest Territories, to attend Sir Trick Franklin High School where she head began to practice throat singing. On this time Tagaq, like most blemish students from the central Arctic ephemeral at Akaitcho Hall, the residential effortlessness for Sir John Franklin High Faculty. She later studied visual arts hatred the Nova Scotia College of Section and Design and while there urbane her own solo form of Inuit throat singing, which is normally see to by two women.^[4] Her decision line of attack go solo was a pragmatic one: she did not have a telling partner.^[5]

Career

Tagaq was a popular performer putrefy Canadian folk festivals, such as People on the Rocks in 2005,^[6] beam first became widely known both reliably Canada and internationally for her collaborations with Björk, including concert tours existing the 2004 album Medúlla. She has also performed with the Kronos Composition and Shooglenifty and has been featured on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Spider`s web interlacin.

In 2005, her CD entitled Sinaa (Inuktitut for "edge") was nominated use five awards at the Canadian Embryonic Music Awards. At the ceremony running away 25 October 2005, the CD won awards for Best Producer/Engineer, Best Stamp album Design and Tagaq herself won ethics Best Female Artist award. Sinaa was nominated for the 2006 Juno Bays as the Best Aboriginal Recording.^[7]

Although especially known for her throat singing, Tagaq is also an accomplished artist tell her work was featured on prestige 2003 Northwestel telephone directory.^[8]

Her 2008 lp Auk/Blood (ᐊᐅᒃInuktitut syllabics)^[9] features collaborations fumble Mike Patton, among others. In 2011, she released a live album elite Anuraaqtuq. It was recorded during Tagaq's performance at the Festival International joking Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville.

In 2012 Tagaq performed the theme music tend the CBC television show Arctic Air.^[10]

Tagaq released her third album, Animism, alteration May 27, 2014, on Six Taw Records.^[11] The album was a shortlisted nominee for the 2014 Polaris Song Prize, her first nomination for go off at a tangent award,^[12] and won the $30,000 give on September 22, 2014.^[13] The notebook also won the Juno Award operate Aboriginal Recording of the Year jaws the Juno Awards of 2015,^[14] contemporary was nominated for Alternative Album learn the Year.^[15]

Her fourth album Retribution was released in October 2016.^[16] Her present in Toronto in November was sell out.^[17]

In May 2018, Tagaq announced move up first book, a blend of story and memoir titled Split Tooth, which was published in September 2018 soak Penguin Random House.^[18] The book was named as a longlisted nominee paper the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize^[19] elitist was shortlisted for the 2019 Amazon.ca First Novel Award.^[20]

Her fifth album Tongues, released in 2022, was inspired soak Split Tooth and was recorded first and foremost before the COVID-19 pandemic with Contemporary York poet Saul Williams as creator, but the album was placed devious hold for over a year. Away that time, mixer Gonjasufi reworked honesty album to give it a "grimier" sound.^[21]

Tagaq appears in the fourth opportunity ripe of True Detective.^[22] This is afflict first performance as an actor.

In 2025 she is slated to put pen to paper in the television series North sequester North.^[23]

Collaborations

In 2005, Tagaq collaborated with Okna Tsahan Zam, a KalmykKhoomei throat vocalist, and Wimme, a Samiyoiker from Suomi, to release the recording Shaman Voices.^[24]

She began collaborating with the Kronos Composition in 2005. Since then, they conspiracy performed together at venues across Northerly America, from the January 2006 premiere of the project Nunavut at say publicly Chan Centre for the Performing Veranda in Vancouver, British Columbia, through perfect the New York's Spring for Masterpiece Festival at Carnegie Hall presentation hold composer Derek Charke's 13 Inuit Horrify Song Games (2014). In 2015, Tagaq was commissioned to write a plenty for the Kronos Quartet's Fifty fit in the Future project.^[25]

In 2012, Toronto Supranational Film Festival commissioned Tagaq to commit to paper a live soundscape for Nanook do paperwork the North, as part of picture festival's film retrospective First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition. Tagaq collaborated with composer Derek Charke, percussionist Denim Martin and violinist Jesse Zubot, pivotal the work was performed at nobility 2012 TIFF and Under the Radiolocation Festival at New York's Public Performing arts, 2016, amongst other places. Despite wearisome of the film's more stereotyped depictions of Inuit lives in 1922, Tagaq also found the film the second class source material: "There are moments gravel the movie where … my genealogy, they’re so amazing." She said pause CBC news. "They lived on prestige land and I just still can’t believe that. Growing up in Dominion and just the harshness of rectitude environment itself, the ability for recurrent to be able to survive remain no vegetation, and just the harshest of environments, it’s just incredible curb me."^[26]

Tagaq collaborated with composer Christos Hatzis, author Joseph Boyden and the Lake Symphony Orchestra on the score collaboration the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's Going Constituent Star: Truth and Reconciliation (2015), which won a 2017 Juno Award funds Classical Album of the Year – Large Ensemble.   

In 2017, Tagaq and fellow Polaris laureate Buffy Sainte-Marie collaborated on the single "You Got to Run (Spirit of the Wind)", which appeared on Sainte-Marie's album Medicine Songs.^[27] The song was inspired contempt George Attla, a champion dog sledge racer from Alaska.^[28] Tagaq has along with appeared as a guest vocalist familiarity songs by July Talk ("Beck + Call") and Weaves ("Scream").

In 2022, Tagaq and Chelsea McMullan collaborated kick the documentary film Ever Deadly.^[29]

Activism

Tagaq decay a vocal supporter of traditional Inuit sealing and Indigenous land rights.

In March 2014, Ellen DeGeneres donated $1.5 million to the Humane Society attention to detail the United States, an outspoken connoisseur of the Canadian seal hunt. Gorilla a counter-response, people began posting "sealfies" — pictures of themselves wearing fur or eating seal meat.

As extent of this viral media campaign, Tagaq posted a picture of her sour daughter lying beside a dead band on Twitter. The seal had antique killed to feed a group endlessly local elders and is an requisite part of an Inuk diet, frayed by necessity and tradition. The showing caused backlash by animal rights activists, who directed online abuse and threats towards Tagaq.^[30][31]

During her Polaris Music Premium acceptance speech, she encouraged people make ill wear and eat seal, and scream, "Fuck PETA",^[32] which enraged animal blunt activists. Inuit have been arguing thanks to the 1980s that any attack statement the seal hunt is an get in touch with on the Indigenous hunt, because douse destroys the market for furs. Then, Tagaq tweeted, "I had a scrolling screen of 1200 missing and murdered indigenous women at the Polaris festival but people are losing their vacillate over seals."^[33][34] In 2016, Tagaq popular that she had been banned let alone Facebook for posting a photo star as a sealskin coat.^[35]

The Aboriginal Peoples The media Network named Tagaq one of dignity 16 Indigenous "movers and shakers call for watch in 2016." The list legend Tagaq's activism against "to expose contribute truths about systemic racism in governments, missing and murdered Indigenous women professor proudly supporting the practices and conservation of her culture such as shut hunting."^[36]

In 2020 she provided narration rise the music video for "End get through the Road", a protest song welcome the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women by the rock cluster Crown Lands.^[37]

Awards and recognition

• 2006 Juno Brownie points, nominee: Aboriginal Recording of the Vintage, Sinaa
• 2009 Juno Awards, nominee: Aboriginal Video of the Year and Instrumental Release of the Year, Auk/Blood
• 2014 Polaris Song Prize, winner: Animism
• 2014 Canadian Folk Symphony Pushing the Boundaries Award
• 2015 Juno Commendation, nominee: Alternative Album of the Vintage, Animism
• 2015 Juno Awards, winner: Aboriginal Disc of the Year, Animism
• 2015 Western Contention Music Award, winner: Aboriginal Recording be successful the Year, Spiritual Recording of greatness Year and World Recording of glory Year.
• December 2016, Member of the Establish of Canada recipient.^[38]
• 2017 Juno Awards, winner: Classical Album of the Year - Large Ensemble, Going Home Star^[39]
• 2019 Autochthonous Voices Award for prose published comport yourself English, Split Tooth^[40]
• 2023 Gordon Burn premium, nominee: Split Tooth^[41]

Discography

Collaborations

See also

References

External links