Tanya Tagaq to present 2015 Appel Lecture

Tanya Tagaq will present the 2015 Gail Appel Lecture at the College of Arts & Science. Photo credit (this image and banner image): Ivan Otis.

by dee Hobsbawn-Smith

Experimental Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, whose most recent CD, Animism, won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize, is coming to Saskatoon to present the 2015 Gail Appel Lectureship in Literature and Fine Arts.

The biennial lecture series was founded by philanthropist Gail Appel with her husband, Mark, in 2002. During her studies at the U of S, Appel (BA ’66) received a letter from her father in which he urged her to follow her passions. This series aims to inspire and encourage Arts & Science students to do the same.

Previous Appel lecturers were musicians Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo and First Nations singer Buffy Sainte-Marie; physicist and novelist Alan Lightman; and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson.

“The diverse nature of the lecturers is a lot like studying arts and sciences,” says Appel. “If you are fortunate and have planned your university time, you will crosscut through a very eclectic group of subjects and people and material to pique your interest.”

Tagaq, a self-taught throat singer from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, was named The Globe and Mail’s Artist of the Year in 2014. Sometimes guttural, sometimes soaring, always elemental and ultra-physical, her “gothic sound art” and primal polar ice songs make her body a vessel for the visceral. Tagaq has collaborated with Icelandic innovator Bjork and the American multi-genre Kronos Quartet, but to some Canadians, she is the socially conscious pro-sealing musician who famously posted a photograph on Facebook of her infant daughter beside a dead seal during the “sealfie” campaign of 2014.

Tagaq’s genre-crossing art offers a perfect creative match for the ideals of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Culture and Creativity (ICCC), which facilitates the lecture in the College of Arts & Science.

“Tanya’s is a very different art form, one a lot of people may not have been exposed to,” says Appel. “It takes an international form – a lot of Inuit culture crosses borders. I hope the audience asks themselves, how does this art form survive? How does it move forward? What is involved? Her art requires listeners to wonder about understanding shamanism and mythology, more than what one runs across in the day-to-day world.”

Speaking to the CBC in May 2014, Tagaq said of her trademark improvisational throat singing, “On an individual basis, it’s like a mirror. I want each individual [listening] to feel what they need to feel.”

Of her sound-sculpting art, she told the broadcaster, “It’s emotive without attachment… Anything can happen. You don’t have to make yourself sound like someone else and you don’t have to do something that already exists. Disagreement is expected on all levels everywhere.”

As in previous Appel lectures, attendees will be treated to hearing the artist speak at length about her career and her art. Although Tagaq’s music is easily found online, such a presentation is a rare opportunity, according to Sabrina Kehoe, associate director of the ICCC. “We seldom get an opportunity to hear the ideas and perspectives of internationally-renowned thinkers, creators and artists, and we rarely have the opportunity to engage meaningfully with them. This lecture offers both experiences.”

Tagaq will present a lecture on the topic of “art as activism” at Neatby-Timlin Theatre at 1:30 p.m. on February 24. Later that day at 7:30 p.m., she will participate in a live sit-down interview about her life with Leisha Grebinski of CBC Radio at Convocation Hall. Both events are free and open to the public.

Tagaq will also be performing at the Broadway Theatre on February 23.