Music

11-year-old Inuit throat singers steal the show at Trudeau ceremony

by Jesse Locke

Justin Trudeau’s swearing-in ceremony earned countless headlines with the introduction of a cabinet made up of 50% women. His pull-quote-ready response to a reporter “Because it’s 2015” has since earned both celebration and skepticism. However, one thing we can (almost) all agree on is that the pair of 11-year-old Inuit throat singers who performed for the PM are both awesome and adorable.

Plucky pre-teens Samantha Metcalfe and Cailyn Degranpre from the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre showed off some impressive throat singing skills before breaking down into giggles. As the Huffington Post notes, the ancient tradition among Inuit women is often performed as a competitive duet. National Geographic describes it as “a mixture of husky chanting and low growling… in which the first person to laugh, stop, or run out of breath loses.”

Tanya Tagac, no slouch on the subject, got all choked up:

Of course, we can leave it to Stephen Harper’s former director of communications Andrew MacDougall to be a huge bummer with this since-deleted Tweet:

The newly elected Ministers of Cuteness visited the CBC’s Ottawa Morning show for a short interview. Listen below: