Artist News Awards

Tanya Tagaq wins Polaris Music Prize

By | Published on Tuesday 23 September 2014

Tanya Tagaq

Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq has been announced as the winner of this year’s $30,000 Polaris Music Prize, with her album ‘Animism’.

This year’s runners up (let’s call them losers) were Arcade Fire, Basia Bulat, Drake, Mac DeMarco, Jessy Lanza, Owen Pallett, Shad, Timber Timbre and YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN. They all get $2000 each as a consolation for not being able to write music that is good enough. And they also had a slap up meal, which is important to remember. No one can take that away from them.

Using her acceptable speech to raise awareness of Canada’s indigenous culture, as did accordionist Geoff in his introduction to Tagaq’s performance at the event, she called on Canadians to eat and wear seal, saying: “People should wear and eat seal as much as possible because if you can imagine an indigenous culture thriving and surviving on sustainable resource, wearing seal and eating it, it’s delicious and there’s lots of them. And fuck PETA”.

Later she added: “We’ve been doing it our own way without backing down artistically or conforming, so to be recognised in this way and have so many people latch on makes me feel the world is tolerable. There’s so much hurt in the world and within indigenous cultures with colonialism. Canada is in a desperate need for repair and I think a lot of people are tired of living this way and just to have people understand where we’re coming from makes me have hope that we can move forward and expose the true history of Canada”.

You can see Berner’s introduction and Tagaq’s incredible performance at last night’s ceremony here, and her acceptance speech here. Or you could just watch the whole four hour show here:



READ MORE ABOUT: |