15 Canadian things America should trade for to form a pop culture super team

12. Philip Glass for Tanya Tagaq

This one may be a little obscure but stick with me here. Tanya Tagaq is one of the most accomplished Inuit singers worldwide, much less within Canada. While we’d be sad to see American composer Philip Glass go – if nothing else, you’ve heard his sweeping music during the Dr. Manhattan sequences of the Watchmen film – it’s a worthy trade. Tagaq is seriously that good.

Tanya Tagaq (who has also been awarded the Order of Canada, by the way) is an Inuk throat singer from the rural north of Canada. Specifically, she hails from Cambridge Bay, located on Victoria Island in Nunavut, Canada. She is a native Inuk person who only began practicing Inuit throat singing while in high school.

In Inuit communities, throat singing is traditionally done by two women. Oftentimes, throat singing is something of a contest – one singer works to outlast the other. Tagaq, however, developed a solo style of the genre and performs as such. She’s become a popular and renowned performer at numerous folk festivals. Tagaq has also performed with other acts, including the Kronos Quartet.

The Kronos Quartet, a San Francisco-based string quartet, has also worked with Philip Glass. While Glass and Tagaq are from very different background, they have both come to create highly unique and affecting music. Glass has described his work as “music with repetitive structures”, which has cemented his place as a minimalist composer. Though Tagaq does not describe her work as such, many of her songs also show a similar structure.