Tanya Tagaq
Tongues

Ghostly noises, clattering pots and pans, damaged melodies. Those in the know speak of noise, industrial, dub, and so on. But that's not the point. The point is: who is this young woman in whose voice a monster resides? Well, her name is Tanya, she's Canadian and belongs to the Inuit minority, a fact which I would say is not insignificant, given that minorities generally have a rather rough time of it. ...

Until the mid-20th century, the Inuit were forced to send their children to Catholic boarding schools. A sort of forced assimilation that, among other things, involved losing their mother tongue. Anyone caught speaking Inuktitut was beaten. “You have no soul and yours is the devil's language.” Tanya, too, suffered such trauma. She spent the early years of her life among people who spoke that strange language. Then, with her family, she had to move to a place where even at home they were forced to speak English. ...

A few years ago, mass graves with the remains of 1400 Inuit children were found on the grounds of five Catholic boarding schools. It was then discovered what was somehow already known. That is, in the so-called civilized schools of Canada, children died from a cultural shock manifested as “abuse,” “cold,” “hunger,” “disease.” Tanya also experienced those boarding schools, although by then attending them was no longer mandatory, but, shall we say, just recommended. “It's to overcome these traumas that I started making music”... ...

But now, let’s take a step back... The first time Tanya left her body, she found an “enormous and sinuous” being, “a twisted mass of muscle and cartilage,” waiting for her. Naturally, she was scared and quickly returned. And despite hearing the monster's rasping behind her, she had a moment to wonder: but if my body isn't here, then what am I running with, what they call a soul or something I don't know? Her curiosity lasted but a moment, and she eventually re-entered her body the same way one returns home after experiencing the dangers of the world. Do you know when you're overcome by fear and you close the door behind you, and for a moment the room has the same jolt as your heart? ...

What Tanya didn't know, however, was that the monster didn't have bad intentions. It was there with a purpose, to teach her how to return the terror and arm her to face the world. In short, it wanted to protect her. Meanwhile, the memory was working from the inside, and one night Tanya found herself dreaming of the land of her ancestors, where one of them said to her in Inuktitut: “Are you sure you did the right thing by running away that time?” ...

Of course, showing up as a twisted mass of muscle and cartilage wasn't exactly a great idea. So it did something unexpected from a monster: it started thinking. And the idea it came up with was the best possible: it chose a more reassuring form and appeared to her in a dream. “The weapon I will give you,” it said, “is the traditional song.” And to do that, it bestowed upon her all the strength of that mass of muscles and cartilage that was never really hers, because it was nothing more than a gift to her. The young woman then bared her teeth, sharpened her claws, and the voice that came from her throat was a scream made of dizziness and shards of glass. “What you must do now,” the monster finally said to her, “is find the right words to bite into the past.” But that wasn’t a problem, the words were inside her. “Colonizer, I don't want your god. Give me back my language, choke on your morality. Touch my children, and my teeth will welcome your throat”... ...

Then the last wonderful metamorphosis... Towards the end of the album, Tanya becomes a mother and recognizes in her child the ancient monster that had protected her. The noises cease... The clattering pots cease... No more noise... No more industrial... Only an otherworldly melody. Something that, if it weren't sweet, would be terrible... “Don't be afraid my little one, in you whom I protect there is also the protector” A protector she knew well. Trallallà...