Tanya Tagaq is a truly singular artist who hails from the Nunavut territory in northern Canada. Though renowned as an Inuit throat singer who has collaborated closely with Björk and Kronos Quartet, Tagaq makes music that absorbs and reflects many genres and is impossible to pigeonhole. 2014 will see the release of her long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s acclaimed album Auk/Blood and on Saturday Feb. 8, she returns to Guelph for a double-bill with Timber Timbre as part of Hillside Inside. Here, Tagaq and I discuss why people south of Nunavut are being kind of pathetic about this whole Polar Vortex thing, her relationship with Guelph, why her last album reflected a passive period while her forthcoming one will be more aggressive, her plans to make electronic and metal music soon, her new album’s tone, fracking, Neutral Milk Hotel, the weird transcendence of underground culture, how to express opinions about politics as a vocalist without using words, her opinion of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, her new album’s title and artwork, some stories behind her yet-to-be-released songs, why her new album doesn’t have many special guests but her next album will, whether she’s concerned about tokenism or the way people have distorted or misinterpreted her work, how her story and an infamous ex-manager inspired her friend Geoff Berner’s hilarious new novel Festival Man, her upcoming show at Carnegie Hall, her relationship with Björk, why Buffy Sainte-Marie makes her cry, the song “Fire ~ Ikuma,” and more.
Related links: isuma.tv/tagaq hillsidefestival.ca vishkhanna.com
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