5 Inuit Music Albums to Check Out for a Crash Course
If you didn’t know: the Inuit are a group of indigenous peoples from the beautifully vast arctic and subarctic regions of the world, including northern Canada and parts of Greenland and Alaska.
I have recently gone down a refreshing rabbit hole into the musical traditions of these peoples, which are so different from the mainstream music that tends to dominate pop culture. I don’t know about you, but I have been hooked on the self-described “urban Inuk” influencer @shinanova these days. She shares her indigenous Canadian culture in an eye-catching way — quite literally, with the stunning traditional face tattoos that she has. My deep dive into Inuit music started when I saw one of her throat singing videos where she and her mother swayed side to side in a joyful, interwoven way. I couldn’t get enough of the unique sounds that they were able to produce together, so I explored more.
What follows here is a guided path of introductory and deeper-dive Inuit music for you to be able to get straight into the music. You will slowly begin to lose sight of the familiar shore as you drift out towards fascinating foreign traditions, but be ready to come back full circle at the end as you approach land with a newfound appreciation for the musical culture of the Inuit. Happy listening!
Quviasugvik: In Search of Harmony
I think this album by sister and throat singer duo PIQSIQ is a great way to begin your exploration, because it is a collection of Christmas carols which might sound familiar to you, but sung using Inuit techniques and featuring eerie native sounds that harmonise with the traditional religious melodies.
If you are anything like me, beginning to listen to this album for the first time might evoke feelings of frisson (the goosebumps that people sometimes feel when confronted with the aesthetic, not unlike the feeling of ASMR). The most powerful piece for me was “Carol of the Bells”, where the rhythmic breathing added something valuable that I never knew was missing from the original piece. Overall, Inuksuk Mackay and Tiffany Ayalik, the two women whose voices you hear, have created a collection of music that encapsulates both exhilaration and mourning, recognisable with its Christmas context, yet also fascinatingly unfamiliar.
Inuit Throat Songs and Drumming
Next up is another sister duo: Nukariik (literally meaning “sisters” in their language). This album by Karin and Kathy Kettler dives straight into a unique sonic experience, almost trance-like in the pulsing in-and-outs of the breath. “Love Song” is a particular favourite of mine from this album, as well as “Paniapiutsunga”, which features drumming that pairs nicely with the soaring melody. Pockets of slight familiarity peek through for me in this album in moments where English suddenly emerges, reminding me that the singers live in Ottawa, Canada.
Canada: Inuit Games and Songs
Now that you’ve warmed up your listening muscles, we can venture even further from the land of the recognisable with this compilation. Recorded in the 1970s by researchers who travelled to Arctic villages, this field recording captures the musical game traditions of the Inuit.
Debut
With this debut album sung by vocalists Cynthia Pitsiulak and Charlotte Qamaniq (not sisters this time!), we are starting to come back full circle towards sounds that we might be more familiar with. The two women blend their traditional throat singing with electronic dance music, and the result is electric. I’m mesmerised by the energy that is held in each song in this album. I must give props to the DJ involved — Rise Ashen — who, according to the Bandcamp page, has “spent his life pursuing the intersection of traditional and futuristic music”.
Inuktitut
What better way to end this exploration than to come back to some kind of comfort zone, but an expanded one? In this album, singer Elisapie reinvigorates famous English-language pop hits such as “Time After Time” and “I Want to Break Free” by translating and adapting them into the Inuit language — with permission from the original artists! This touching gift to her community is also a gift for those of us who want to experience the poetry of the music we already know and love through a different linguistic vehicle: what Elisapie aptly describes as the “raw sounds” of her people’s language.
I hope you have enjoyed this little crash course on Inuit music and feel intrigued to learn more about the beautiful culture that has made its home in some of the northernmost lands of our planet.
Let me know which album you enjoyed most in the comments!
