“One of the avant-garde’s most dynamic performers.” – Rolling Stone

“This fiercely charistmatic Inuk singer’s throaty voice demands full attention,
whether she’s whispering in her softest register or howling at the sky.” – NY Times

“The Inuk experimental musician joins landscape, culture and resistance.” – Pitchfork

“The uncompromising Inuit throat singer,
composer and author pushes the human voice to surprising places.” - NPR

Tanya Tagaq is one of Canada’s most celebrated and original artists. As comfortable on world stages in couture as she is steering a quad over the land in her home of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Tagaq’s complexity, originality, strength, gentleness and humour is not easily captured in word or video. With studio albums, collaborations across classical, indie rock and metal worlds, a Giller Prize long listed debut novel and countless other multi- disciplinary projects in the works, Tagaq’s art is a universe unto itself. Tagaq the person is no less a multitude of experiences, emotions and observations: with a keen mind, an open heart, and a laser-sharp ability to cut through to the quick, Tagaq shows us a way forward.

CBS 60 Minutes traveled to performances at a club in NYC, a theatre in Minneapolis, a festival in Yellowknife and to Tagaq’s home in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, to showcase the artist and human like never before. The profile, over a year in the making, airs on Sunday, May 5, 2019 and presents Tagaq as she is: an artist, an activist, a mother, a sister, a daughter.

Tagaq’s music is an utterly unique and urgently compelling improvisational approach to sound creation. As a vocalist, Tagaq is a breath-contortionist, a master at her self-defined, signature craft. A throat singer, a death growler, a harrowing whisperer, a gentle cooer; an artist who can channel sounds from her environment into rhythmic, pounding layers that weave in and out of her collaborators’ instrumental and electronic elements. Tagaq’s albums have included pointed yet winking covers of artists from the Pixies to Nirvana to Iron Maiden, spoken word elements and hip hop guests, metal, art-rock, classical and ambient electronic elements swirling into one “art-metal blizzard” (Rolling Stone). With a long list of accomplishments that include composer, author, painter and beyond, music is the foundation for a career that is rapidly gathering speed, force and prestige. Tagaq is just getting started.

Tagaq’s most recent music project, Toothsayer (released March 2019) is a commission for the UK National Maritime Museum’s permanent “Polar Worlds” exhibit.

LISTEN TO TOOTHSAYER here.

Her debut novel, Split Tooth, was recently nominated for Amazon Canada’s First Novel Award and Rakuten Kobo’s Emerging Writer Prize.

Read more about Amazon Canada First Novel Award here.
Read more about Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize here.