Inuit Vocal Games

Inuit vocal games are the traditional throat-singing practices of Inuit communities across the Canadian Arctic, Greenland and Alaska, best known as katajjaq in Nunavik and Nunavut. Two women stand face to face, one leading with short, rhythmic, often wordless motifs built from voiced and unvoiced breath sounds, guttural tones and imitations of animals, wind and water, while the other answers in exact interlock, until one laughs or runs out of breath. Played historically by women while men hunted, the games are at once contest, entertainment and a precise art of breath and timbre.