Into the Arctic

Annie Kappianak

Numbers 64 and 65 of the Top 100 2012 happen to belong to the same series of recording and come from the same album: Songs of the Inuit Iglulik. Both songs were recorded by Jean-Jacques Nattiez in 1977. That the songs appear next to one another in the list is a coincidence; I do not place the songs into the list as I fancy, the songs appear by virtue of a number system. Both the Huangahaaq (#65) and the Nirdliruyartak (#64) happened to end up with the exact same number of points. Both Huangahaaq and Nirdliruyartak are a form of throat singing games but different from katajjait (a song style). Compared to the dozens of katajjait recordings that have featured in recent top 100s they were also recorded further north from the Hudson Bay area most katajjait originated from. Number 64 was recorded in Pond Inlet and 65 in Iglulik. Both locations are close to one another and well inside the Arctic Circle. The Inuit: Iglulik cd is well documented. It comes with a 55 page booklet with numerous illustrations, all photographs by Jean-Jacques Nattiez. The photo of Annie Kappianak (together with Rose Iquallijuk) that appears in the booklet is the only throat game song illustrated though and is of the performer of number 65 be it with a different partner than on the recording. Kappianak teams up with Jeanne Amainuk on a Huangahaaq game. The song "is not based on a text but on the juxtaposition of syllables or words, connected more for their sonorous qualities than for telling a story." "The game consists of making the partner lose [his] seriousness, using diverse modulations of the word hang. The women pull wry faces."

Iglulik Inuit, Jean-Jacques Nattiez

The nirdliruyartak is similar to the katajjait of Northern Quebec. The nirdliruyartak is a complex game of alternating high and low sounds and is difficult to learn. The sounds are made while both inhaling and exhaling. The high sequence of sounds is called nirdliruyartak, which means goose cry, and is the name of the game. The image I used for this song does not appear in the cd booklet but appears in Inuit Throat-Games and Siberian Throat Singing: A Comparative, Historical, and Semiological Approach by Jean-Jacquez Nattiez. [University of Montreal, 1999] The women in the photo by Nattiez are not identified by name but are Iglulik.