Seventeen years after the release of his first album, Sinaa, co-produced by Björk, Inuit author and musician improviser Tanya Tagaq bangs her fist on the table with flip flops, a rant recycling the ideas and words contained in his first novel, Split Tooth, Where fang splitsa in her translation published by Alto in 2019. On experimental electronic music, the most famous Canadian ambassador of the tradition of throat singing gives threatening and inquisitive airs to her voice to expel anger at the place of the colonist who submitted his people to centuries of violence and injustice. A captivating and necessary hard drive, which will have a sequel, already promises Tagaq.
“Am I mad? I don’t really know, actually,” she thinks out loud. “I’m often told I’m angry, and I imagine I am. Sure, I’m angry about a lot of stuff, but to reduce myself to that feeling would be inaccurate. One thing is certain: it feels good to bring out these emotions! »
These are not the reasons that fail him to want to sink his fangs into the jugular of the oppressor, as the news has been busy regularly reminding us for a few years. ” Touch my children / And my teeth welcome your windpipe “, she hisses on Teeth Agape, while a synthetic bass rumbles punctuated by a techno rhythm, just after the song Colonizer, rock discharge whose text is summarized with this sentence repeated on all the keys: You colonizer / Oh you’re guilty “.
I am often told that I am angry, and I imagine that I am. Sure, I’m angry about a lot of stuff, but to reduce myself to that feeling would be inaccurate. One thing is certain: it feels good to bring out these emotions!
On the title track, she recites, on a muffled and lame hip-hop rhythm: They took our tongues / They tried to take our tongues / We lost our language / And we didn’t / Inuuvunga [Je suis une Inuite] / You can’t take that from us / You can’t take that from us / You can’t take our blood “. In concert, the song will also be performed in Inuktitut, but it was to be recorded in English: “It’s very important that the Anglophones, the settlers, understand what I have to say to them. It is important for everyone that everyone takes responsibility for all that has happened to Aboriginal people since we are still suffering from the repercussions of their actions. And the rhetoric that this is ancient history is only a smokescreen: it is still happening today, we must recognize it so that everyone can work together to stop it. »
flip flops, the sixth album of his career, is vindictive, but ends on a tender and benevolent note. The groove of the song Do Not Fear Love is abstract, deformed, but its text is a lesson in life: “Imagine when you hold out your hand to someone who rejects it every time; at some point, you stop offering it to him. This song means not to lose hope in what is good in the world. That we must not cut ourselves off from the world and risk living in bitterness. That we must not turn our backs on what is beautiful in our lives, even if we had it hard and we were hurt. »
The text of Do Not Fear Love had been written for his daughter, when she was 6 years old. “She is now 18; I’ve been dragging this text for a long time, I wanted to present it and celebrate my child. It’s also a way for me to display my own vulnerability because when I’m on stage, I feel very protected, sheltered from the world; however, I always tend to express the fury and the passion which inhabit me. But the older I get, the more music I make, the more mellowed I tend to be. I actually think it’s important to show that I’m also a sweet, kind, calm, loving person. »
As she is now on the phone, somewhere north of Toronto where she lives. Tanya Tagaq answers questions in a soft and smiling voice, weighing her words carefully, while in the studio or on stage, Tagaq’s voice takes on incredible forms. She huffs, she growls, she screams. This mastery of his instrument is absolutely incredible — you should do dubbing! ” Oh ! I would love to try, that would be the fun ! Playing a role with my voice, I would like that! »
Besides, it’s a bit to give a role to his words that the album was born flip flops, she explains . “I was asked to record an ‘audio book’ version of my novel. After doing it, I thought to myself, “I guess it’s nice to listen to me read the text aloud, but what a boring thing to do without music!” I couldn’t even scream…” This reflection made the author want to return to the studio with these same words, seeking the help of the esteemed Saul Williams, American poet, rapper, singer, who spent his brilliant career in bringing together the literary and hip-hop worlds.
Saul Williams acts as director of flip flops. Tanya has been a fan of the man for over twenty years. “I had to prepare myself to meet him for the first time, so as not to seem too impressed to be in his presence! Their collaboration began with long conversations, followed by very direct questions that the American addressed to the musician. “He wanted to understand what I was looking for with this project,” she explains. He made me say things that I had never said before – I told him that I was a ” rave kid when I was in college! Or my affection for the hair metal of the 1980s — it was a period of fun for me, I remember when I was 12, my father gave me the Def Leppard album! she adds, assuring us that she will one day make a long-haired metal record.
They brought together the musicians of Tanya’s orchestra in the studio, for a few recording sessions, the result of which served as raw sound material entrusted to a long-time collaborator of Williams, the Californian composer and remixer Gonjasufi, an accomplice of Flying Lotus by The Gaslamp Killer, who designed a brilliant setting for Tagaq’s vocal acrobatics. “This guy, what a talent, what a human, what a friend! We are similar in many ways, including in our way of working: a song can change completely depending on the day we work on it, because sound is something alive, it grows, it constantly evolves. The trick is knowing how to capture it at the right time. That’s what I like about improvisation. »
This is also what makes flip flops so lively, on edge: an urgent, provocative and proud record. “When I was very young, at school, I was always the one who found herself being punished, always the one who was expelled from the class. I was “the little shit disturber”, so it makes sense for me to continue down this path today,” concludes Tanya Tagaq with a laugh.