Björk opens doors for Nunavut singer

ALISON BLACKDUCK

IQALUIT — Singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis sounds remarkably composed, given that she’s two days late for her debut.

In Paris.

With Björk.

But Gillis has her limits and the paper-pushers at Immigration Canada are testing them — severely.

“Oh, fer chrissakes!” the 26-year-old says over the telephone from Montreal, where she’s been delayed for almost two weeks while her passport application is fast-tracked. “I’m still waiting for it, it’s supposed to come today, and I’m really freaking out.”

Gillis’ passport is a ticket to a rarefied world of artistic and commercial opportunity.

And Icelandic pop superstar Björk is the one who propped open the door less than three weeks ago.

Now all that stands between Gillis and a place alongside Björk on her world tour is a courier delivery.

“I’m really sad because I’ve been checking out Björk’s Web site and they’re starting to not mention me because I’m not there,” Gillis moans. “And it’s really, really frustrating and her first show was a couple of days ago and just realizing that if my passport would have come through faster, I would have been there with her.”

Björk’s Vespertine tour began Saturday night in Paris at the Grand Rex theatre. The show was sold-out, as are most of the others, including the only scheduled Canadian gig at Toronto’s Hummingbird Centre on Oct. 7.

Björk wasn’t the only person waiting in Paris for Gillis, either.

“I have two friends who flew to Paris to see me — they’d never met before — and they’re in Paris together,” she says. “And I’m not.”

But if recent events are any indication, this bout of bureaucratic bungling will probably be the only stain on what’s been a charmed month for Gillis.

Björk invited Gillis to audition informally in New York after she heard the Cambridge Bay native on the soundtrack of an Icelandic documentary.

Gillis estimates that Björk saw the documentary “a month ago,” because that’s when Björk’s agent called Gillis, who was performing at a folk festival in Vancouver at the time.

“She flew me to New York as soon as she saw it,” Gillis says.

“She brought me in, gave me a mic,” she says. “I think it’s so funny, I think she brought me in because she wanted to get to know me because she knew what I could do musically. She wanted to see if I’d be compatible with the tour.

“She played me a couple of her songs and asked me to sing along. Then she asked me if I was busy for the next five months.

“She’s got this reputation as, whatever, but, honestly I think it’s just from being from somewhere North. You know how people are really soft and really hard in the North? I think she’s like that.

“She’s just really nice, really humble, she doesn’t seem like a superstar at all. She’s very pleasant to be around.”

Gillis began throat-singing in 1998, mainly to prove that she’s an Inuk.

“I grew up in Cambridge, but I can’t speak Inuktitut,” she says. “Some people from the East wouldn’t consider me an Inuk because I’m half-white and I don’t speak Inuktitut, but that’s why I started throat-singing.

“It’s easier to throat-sing than speak Inuktitut, and I missed my culture,” she says.

But Gillis says some Inuit criticize her performance style as inauthentic. Others assume she began performing in order to cash in on her ethnicity.

Some of those critics, she says, think she hasn’t paid her dues.

“Did you know I spent one year teaching and paying my own way to gigs?” she asks. “I spent $30,000 paying my way to go around and perform because I love it.

“Nunavut never helped me financially… I’m from a small town, I’m used to being dissed, as long as nobody can stop me.

“(Throat-singing) was always used for entertainment, and there are many (issues) of our culture that need addressing more than whether somebody likes throat-singing,” she says. “I think if people want to talk, they should address the amount of child abuse that goes on or the number of women who are abused.

“Instead of having people resent me because I’m doing something different, I want people to be happy about the fact that there’s an Inuk girl who grew up in a small town and is succeeding in the white man’s world.”

The Gillis interrupts the interview. “The FedEx truck is here,” she says excitedly. “I’ve got to go.”