Oh, Canada. Tanya Tagaq, whose music incorporates Inuit throat singing, beat out the likes of Arcade Fire, Drake, and Mac DeMarco to win the country’s 2014 Polaris Music Prize, which was announced at a gala Monday night. Tagaq, who won for her albumAnimism—up against Arcade Fire’s Reflektor and Drake’s Nothing Was the Same, among others—used her acceptance speech to discuss wearing and eating seal,according to The Canadian Press.
“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,” she said. “I really believe that if hipsters can make flower beards in, then you can do it with seal.” Touché.
But don’t be too sad for Arcade Fire or Drake, who certainly don’t need the exposure that comes with winning the $30,000 prize, which according to its mission statement, “annually honours, celebrates and rewards creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music by recognizing, then marketing the albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history, as judged by a panel of selected music critics.” Vice reported last year that “the focus of Polaris has evidently shifted away from rewarding up-and-coming acts to shining more praise on acts that don’t necessarily need it. Or at least that’s how a lot of cranky music nerds have come to look at it all.”
Listen to Tagaq explain throat singing here:
