Tanya Tagaq album on long list for 2022 Polaris Music Prize
Six Shooter Records touts album as Tagaq ‘at her most explicit’
Tanya Tagaq’s album, Tongues, is on this year’s Polaris Prize long list. (Photo by Justin Nobel)
Renowned musician, Order of Canada member and Juno award winner Tanya Tagaq’s album Tongues is on the long list for the 2022 Polaris Music Prize.
Released in January, Tongues is touted by her record label, Six Shooter Records, as Tagaq “at her most explicit and specific.”
The album incorporates passages of text from her 2018 debut novel Split Tooth, a depiction of a young Inuk girl growing up in an unnamed town in what is now Nunavut.
One of Tagaq’s singles on the album, also called Tongues, was released ahead of the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada last year.
The song contains lyrics such as, “I don’t want your shame, it doesn’t belong to me,” and, “I don’t want your god,” addressing horrors and crises directly instead of alluding to them like in her past releases, according to a news release from the label.
The long list for the Polaris Music Prize consists of 40 albums by celebrated Canadian artists including The Halluci Nation, Arcade Fire and Joyful Joyful.
This year, a total of 223 albums were considered by the prize’s 197-member jury.
The short list, which will be made up of 10 albums, is scheduled to be unveiled on July 14.
The Polaris Music Prize will then award $50,000 to one winning artist for creating the Canadian Album of the Year, judged solely on artistic merit, without consideration for genre or record sales.
Last year’s winner was Cadence Weapon, for the album Parallel World.
The nine other nominated acts whose albums make the short list will receive $3,000 each.
Tanya is fierce!
I’d probably name my child Tanya if I had one. Girl or boy.
good luck and have fun.
Maybe I’m just too old for this style of music but I find her music unlistenable. Either way congratulations
I have listen to one song and I can honestly say that it hurt my ears. I don’t know how anyone would like,listen to her music. ?
I suspect that many of Tanya’s fans are more into her politics and performative twitter outrage than her music. Granted, that’s only an intuition.
when was the last time this artist came to Nunavut?
I remember she ‘performed’ in Cambridge Bay and when she was done the silence and utter disbelief from Elders showed how much she was appreciated here.
no thank you.
Tanya Tagaq the darling of the Polaris Prize set, who seem to be the only people who actually listen to her music.
There sure are a lot of crabs in the bucket today.