Tanya Tagaq

Tanya Tagaq is an Inuk throat singer-songwriter and avant-garde performer. Born in Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, on the south coast of Victoria Island, she left home at 15 to attend high school in Yellowknife. It was there that she first experimented with throat singing, a traditional art normally practiced by two women. Later, as a student of visual arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, she developed her own solo form of throat singing and soon gained popularity as a performer, both nationally and internationally, through collaborations with Bjork, the Kronos Quartet, Buffy Sainte-Marie and others. Tagaq has won numerous awards, including the 2014 Polaris Music Prize and the 2015 Juno Award for Aboriginal Recording of the Year. In 2016, she was named a Member of the Order of Canada. She is an outspoken advocate for environmental reform and protection of Inuit communities.

“It’s incredible to get up on stage and be a really fierce woman.”