Tanya Tagaq at Massey Hall

Photo courtesy of Massey Hall | Malcolm Cook

“Who knew that a little Eskimo from a small town will be performing at Massey Hall?”

Tanya Tagaq was humbled by the full house, and an enthusiastic full house. The experimental Inuk throat singer from Cambridge Bay, or Ikaluktuutiak, in Nunavut, was also surprised at the number of people who were there to experience her “weird”, as was concluded by the herself, music that was about to be performed by the native throat singer, along with her backup duo, drums and violin, with a full choir ensemble. Before starting, Tanya expressed her love for the drummer and the violinist with whom she’s been inventing a unique alphabet to share the common tastes and interests between the three, expressed in a pure, fundamentally honest approach to music. And so they begun.

As pointed out by Tanya, as a less known fact, her performances were all improvisations. For those of you less familiar with the terminology, improvisation approach to art in general and music in specific means an unplanned expression of elements used in the art form in order to create a conversation between the artists involved in the unplanned expression. The bigger your vocabulary, the more interesting the conversation will become. Jazz is the best example, where notes are used as letters and melodies as words to create such conversations. In the case of Tanya Tagaq, however, what was achieved was more of a soundscape than music in its traditional definition. To me, it was as pure, honest, and natural as singing of birds, howling of wind, and falling of rain. It simply just is, free and unconditional. You don’t ask “why birds are singing what they sing?”, they just do. It can, in a way, express the absolute freedom that can be achieved when one goes beyond reason and logic. When there are no words and no familiar melodic or rhythmic arrangement and agreement, when there are no mistakes, no reasons, no wrongs. And I think it was this level of freedom that made some of the audience uncomfortable, perhaps unwilling, to let go and to experience something that they hadn’t experienced before. Those unwilling people left during the nonstop set of a uniquely presented atmosphere and soundscape. Those who remained, however, were more than adequate to express the satisfaction and the joy that they got from the artists on the stage.

It was a wonderful sight to witness such an experimental act, as far away from the mainstream as humanly possible, was received with a standing ovation at one of the greatest and the most legendary music venues in North America. I take this experience as a positive sign of a collective growth that is happening among the lovers of the art form, a universal language and an understanding that we all share yet not all are able or willing to approach with open minds.