Don’t get comfortable: Tanya Tagaq has a new video out for "Uja," and it’s a slow build of frenetic emotion that’ll leave you breathless by song’s end.
The track, from her Polaris Prize-winning album, Animism, is at first set to images of Tagaq in the city, flipping through shots of the subway, the street, blowing snow — all at night. As her throat-singing comes in, the images move faster, framed by Tagaq’s parka so we know she’s still guiding us. The city gets blurry. The image of a woman applying makeup dissolves into that of a decaying skull. Tagaq’s Hollywood star seeps into the ground, and disappears. We slip through a tunnel into nature, where the wolves own the land and they hunt for survival.
It seems impossible to fit so much commentary into a three-minute video — missing and murdered Aboriginal women, policing, predation, hunting, survival — but it’s unsurprising that Tagaq pulls it off. She is a force, and so is her music. It’s only fitting that the images refuse to placate.
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by Holly Gordon via Electronic RSS
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