Often categorized as an avant-garde singer/composer, Tanya Tagaq’s visceral, haunting and, at times, animist vocal performances redefine and, ultimately, annihilate genres. Tagaq taps into a time and place where language holds no currency; Tagaq and her bandmates use improvisation and interplay to communicate wordless, blistered, raw emotion. With every note, beat, breath, gasp and utterance, Tagaq telepathically transports listeners. This is genetic memory realized, animal spirit vocalized, retribution galvanized. A Tanya Tagaq concert is a challenge: a difficult conversation for which everyone may not be ready. Like her award-winning book, Split Tooth, Tagaq's music unravels the complex spaces between dark and light, injurer and injured, spirit and physical, so that we may examine them together, only to re-examine ourselves.
Biography by Chantal Vitalis