This was an unusual performance in 
Loews Theater, with the classic silent movie Nanook of the North playing on the movie screen, accompanied by Tanya Tagaq and band in the front.
From the talk afterwards, we learned that the performance is improvised as they follow the movie on monitors. Known as a throat singer, I expected Tanya to be following that tradition. However, a too much of the “singing” seemed like incoherent screaming and muttering. A lot of it was really loud and unpleasant, particularly with the storm scenes in the movie.
The film itself has a checkered past. The filmmaker Robert Flaherty did make the film in the Arctic, living and working up there for a number of years. There is controversy about how things were staged, with the Inuit using harpoons in the movie, while they were actually using rifles at the time. But I suppose the point is that at that time, they still remembered how to use harpoons. Among other interesting points, Flaherty’s mistress is shown as one of Nanook’s “wives” in the movie, and Flaherty also abandoned a son Josephie, the subject of a book The Long Exile.
The discussion afterward was very interesting, as Tanya is a passionate and committed advocate for Inuit and First Nation issues, in particular the many missing women in Canada (No More Stolen Sisters).
