Meet the Inuit throat singers revitalizing the tradition and engaging new audiences

Sisters Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk McKay were children when they first learned the Inuit cultural practice of throat singing.  

"If you ask a kid when they first learn to do ABC's, they probably wouldn't be able to tell you exactly when. It was just a normal part of childhood for us," says McKay.

Together the sisters make up the electronic throat singing duo, PIQSIQ [pronounced pilk-silk]. The duo's roots stem from Nunavut but they grew up in Yellowknife, N.W.T.,

Throat singing is a musical tradition, a bonding activity and a game that involves two women, standing face-to-face, testing their vocal agility and improvisation skills.

Like many other Inuit and Indigenous traditions, throat singing almost went extinct due to  colonialist pressures from the Canadian government and the Catholic Church. But today, it's being revived and even reimagined by a new generation of Inuit youth as part of a larger cultural renaissance to celebrate and spread awareness of Inuit culture.

When people ask throat singer Nikki Komaksiutiksak to describe throat singing, she tells them the story that her grandmother told her. 

"One day when a group of men went out hunting … they never came back to the community to feed the women and children," said Komaksiutiksak, executive director of Tunngasugit,  a resource centre in Winnipeg that helps Inuit from the North who are transitioning to life in Winnipeg.  .

"Two women went down to the ocean and they started mimicking different animal noises with their throats. That's how they caught their food to feed their children."

This, she says, is the origin of throat singing. However, throat singing is not just a cultural practice. It's also an art form, a bonding activity and a game. 

"Basically the first person that laughs is a loser," Komaksiutiksak joked. "So it's a bit of a competition now."

PIQSIQ and Komaksiutiksak are a small but vital part of a cultural renaissance that's happening in Inuit cultures and it's the younger generation that motivates them to keep going.

They say there's a hunger there in younger Inuit audiences to learn whatever they can, reclaim this tradition and re-imagine it in new and innovative ways.

"Now people are doing some of the things that we're doing like bridging or weaving throat singing with Celtic music or with rock'n'roll, country, folk and electronic stuff," Ayalik said. 

As children, Ayalik and McKay would often throat sing on camping trips when they ran out of things to do. However, when they asked family members to teach them new songs, they always noticed an element of discomfort.