Inuit throat singing

Inuit throat singers

Inuit throat singing or katajjaq, also known (and commonly confused) under the generic term overtone singing, is a form of musical performance uniquely found among the Inuit. Unlike the throat singers in other regions of the world, particularly, Tibet, Mongolia and Tuva, the Inuit performers are usually women who sing only duets in a kind of entertaining contest to see who can outlast the other. However, at least one notable performer, Tanya Tagaq Gillis, performs throat singing as a solo artist and as a collaborator with non-throat singing musicians such as Björk. The musical duo Tudjaat performed a mixture of traditional throat singing and pop music.

Migration

The Ainu people of Japan had throat singing (rekkukara) until 1976, when its last practitioner died. It resembled more the Inuit variety than the Mongolian. If this technique of singing emerged only once and then in the Old World, the move from Siberia to northern Canada must have been over the Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago. However, this is only a theory and not necessarily subscribed to by First Nations or Inuit people.

New World terms

The name for throat singing in Canada varies with the geography:

• Iirngaaq - some Nunavut communities
• Piqqusiraarniq or Pirkusirtuk - Igloolik and Baffin Island
• Qiarvaaqtuq - Arviat
• Katajjaq or Katadjak - Nunavik and South Baffin
• Nipaquhiit - some Nunavut communities

The natives of Alaska have lost the art and those in Greenland evidently never developed it.

Inuit throat singing

Traditionally when the men were away on a hunting trip, the women left at home would entertain themselves with games, which may have involved throat singing. Two women face each other usually in a standing position. One singer leads by setting a short rhythmic pattern, which she repeats leaving brief silent intervals between each repetition. The other singer fills in the gap with another rhythmic pattern. Usually the competition lasts up to three minutes until one of the singers starts to laugh or is left breathless.

At one time, the lips of the two women almost touched, so that one singer used the mouth cavity of the other as a resonator, but this is less common in present day. Often, the singing is accompanied by a shuffling in rhythm from one foot to the other. The sounds may be actual words or nonsense syllables or created during exhalation.

"The old woman who teaches the children [throat singing songs] corrects sloppy intonation of contours, poorly meshed phase displacements, and vague rhythms exactly like a Western vocal coach."

Inuit throat singing in popular culture

• A scene of Inuit throat singing appears in the 1974 Timothy Bottoms film The White Dawn.
• The 2003 film The Snow Walker contains a scene of Inuit throat singing.
• The 2007 film, Wristcutters: A Love Story, features a "mute" character named Nanuk who practices this style of throat singing.
• A rather imaginative variation on throat singing is featured in the 2007 Dan Simmons novel, The Terror.
• In a scene of the The Simpsons Movie (2007), Homer Simpson is shown throat singing with an Inuit woman in order to have an epiphany.
• Rick Mercer in an episode of his self-hosted show, the Rick Mercer Report, attempted to throat sing with an Inuit woman when he visited the 2008 Arctic Winter Games in Yellowknife.
• An August 2008 an AT&T radio commercial references kadajjat/throat singing in reference to the speaker's roommate.

External links

• Inuit Throat-Singing
• Canada Inuit Games and Songs | UbuWeb Ethnopoetics