Celebrated Inuit performer Tanya Tagaq reclaims the controversial 1922 film Nanook of the North. The Polaris Music Prize and Juno Award-winning vocalist employs exquisite, unnerving improvisations, as much rooted in traditional roots as in contemporary culture.

Nanook of the North is considered the world's first major work of non-fiction filmmaking, yet it is rife with contradictions. The film portrays the lives of an Inuk family in Arctic Canada. Its director, Robert Flaherty, lived and worked with Inuit for years, but still included staged scenes of buffoonery and feigned Inuit ignorance of modern accoutrements.

Working with composer Derek Charke, Tagaq, along with percussionist Jean Martin and violinist Jesse Zubot, performs a live accompaniment to the film's silent images of life in an early 20th-century Inuit community in Northern Quebec.

Drawing on her childhood on Nunavut's Victoria Island, and on her mother's memories of forced relocation from the film's Northern Quebec location, Tagaq's sense of the sound of the Arctic spaces shown in the film transforms the images, adding tremendous feeling and depth to what is a complex mix of beautiful representations and racially charged clichés.

Tanya Tagaq in concert with Nanook of the North was commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival, where it premiered to critical acclaim in 2012 as part of TIFF First Nations.

"Tagaq projects sounds that carry the imprint of the body’s secret contours and recesses, delving far beyond personal utterance, out beyond human identity, to summon voices from the flesh cavity haunts of animal spirits and primal energies."

The Wire

Photo by Shelagh Howard. Download hi-res version here.

Photo by Nadya Kwandibens. Download hi-res version here.

Photo by Nadya Kwandibens. Download hi-res version here.

"Fiercely contemporary... Recalling animal noises and various other nature sounds, she was a dynamo, delivering a sort of gothic sound art while she stalked the small basement stage with feral energy."

The New York Times

"To witness Tanya Tagaq perform live is to experience a species of primal/visceral/guttural channeling-cum-exorcism... an altogether new form."

The Toronto Star

"Nobody, anywhere, sounds like she does."

The Globe and Mail

"She taps into humanity's most naked emotions and forces them into the spotlight... the best musical performance any of us had ever seen."

Vice Music