Tanya Tagaq - Tongues

⭐ 6.5/10

(Originally written by Zach)

My first experience with Tanya Tagaq was seeing her perform live during a live audience edition of CBC's Q. I think Jian Ghomeshi was even there :/

Her rhythmic throat singing moved an awestruck audience. I turned to look at others around me and found faces wet with tears. Tagaq was a force.

Her latest album Tongues is something you'd better be in the mood for. Tagaq stands firmly and defiantly in front of the colonizer, discrediting the divine justification of past, present, and future, "I don't want your God. Put him down. I don't want your shame. I want to come." She does not need to inherit settler ways because she has always had a way.

On Colonizer, Tagaq repeats over muffled drums,"Ooh, ooh, colonizer, You colonizer, Oh, you're guilty." So you can't say she doesn't get right to the point. It's fairly clear Tagaq wants to lay blame where its due sacrificing poetry and amplifying experimental expression. See-sawing between swoon-y guilting and punk rock branding, she is committed to her truth.

Teeth Agape combines a prog-house beat, with chants, with fierce lyrics reminding anyone who dares to mess with the mother, that they will bleed. Tagaq embodies, truly, through tooth, claw, and saliva the deep primal desire to protect offspring. But the children to be protected are not exclusively Tagaq's. She is readying herself to defend the lives and legacy of children taken from parents into residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and those many missing and murdered women and girls.

I Forgive Me, reminisces on Tagaq's own experience of victimization as a young girl. The disjointed and disparate sounds from an 808 drum beat, a droning flute, retro video games, knives being sharpened, and a feeble guitar represent the pain and confusion that the lyrics elucidate.

My favorite track is Earth Monster. Not only does the music sound like Interstellar but it is a poem about a mother beholding her daughter. Bringing out the most unremarkable things to admire, like her patella, amplifies a profound intimacy that any parent could relate to.

The album, is not what I expected. Maybe because I have previously stuck with a few Tagaq tracks and I don't have a good representational template to go by. Apple Music has Tonges in the 'Alternative' category and it is definitely that but I would perhaps call this Experimental Neo-Traditional-Electric Poetry.

As I said before, you definitely need to be in the right mood for this album. I don't know if I would put any of these songs on any playlists for casual listening. The value in this for me is an opportunity to hear an experienced voice far outside my experience. Tagaq raises discomfort in me as a white Canadian not only in the clash of sounds she employs but in the clash of cultures she embodies. There's an irony of bestowing guilt upon colonizers through Apple Music but it doesn't diffuse what needs to be acknowledged. To listen to Tagaq is to listen to a dissenting voice arising from the Canadian mosaic. Her voice dismisses the mosaic, denies it, and declines the invitation to participate because the invitation is and always has been illegitimate theatre. A lazy Google search will provide anyone who cares to know with dozens of reasons for this claim.

Though it might not be as palatable as other offerings, Tagaq's unique brew may be the prescription to combat denial and induce self-reflection on what it means to be on stolen/borrowed/un-ceded land. Give it a spin.

For further exploration:

July Talk (feat. Tanya Tagaq), Beck + Call - Tagaq lends throat singing to the driving rock of July Talk.

The Halluci Nation (feat. Tanya Tagaq), Sila - This is a banger. Turn it up loud and bob your head.

Tanya Tagaq (feat. Shad), Centre - One of THE. BEST. MCs around and honestly this is just here to send you to check out Shad. It's also got crows on it. So.

Read this: https://theoutline.com/post/8686/canada-is-fake