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The record crossed folk music, electronic music, and ambient noise in an exploration of environmental conservation. (Her competitors included Drake and Arcade Fire.) The songs on “Animism” displayed the potency and range of throat singing, punctuating Tagaq’s vocals with clicking drums and disquieting strings. Tagaq’s music took an explicitly political turn in the twenty-tens, starting with “ Animism,” the 2014 album that won her Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize. She made her solo début in 2005, with “Sinaa,” a largely unadorned exhibition of melodic throat singing. Tagaq first became known internationally for appearing on several songs from Björk’s 2004 album, “Medúlla,” which was primarily performed a cappella. It wasn’t until she was in her twenties, and in university, that her mother introduced her to throat singing-which, Tagaq has said, “woke up bones.” Solo and self-taught, Tagaq has spent her music career blending the traditional form with sounds from contemporary music.

(The severance of ties between Indigenous people and their communities and traditions is a major theme in her music and life.) When Tagaq’s family was moved to the settlement at Cambridge Bay during her childhood, she felt pressured to assimilate other kids discouraged speaking Inuktitut, an Inuit language.

Tagaq, who was born to an Inuit family in Nunavut, didn’t grow up practicing the form.

The game ends when one person laughs or runs out of breath. Usually, two performers face each other, each holding the other’s arms and generating sounds that mimic nature-grunts, squeals, squawks, coos, and crows-for the other to answer. The tradition of Inuit throat singing originated as a playful contest between women. It is her technique and vision that have made her one of the most celebrated and innovative practitioners of her culture’s visceral style. Her performing, at once animalistic and operatic, brings a spirit of experimentation to an old tradition: in the course of her career, Tagaq, an advocate for Indigenous rights and cultural practices, has updated the exercise to include drums, electronica, and even spoken-word poetry. The form that she practices uses guttural sounds and breaths to produce a physical performance of groans, gasps, and sighs, conjuring a sonic landscape which is by turns rhythmic and melodic. The Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq makes music that seems to cleanse the body.