Inuit Throat-Games and Siberian Throat Singing

"While the religious context attached to the throat-technique has disappeared among the Inuit, the specific vocal technique of the genre has remained; but either the ludic function has survived alone, or it has replaced the religious signified attached to this vocal signifier. This doesn't imply that throat-games do not mean anything today. They mean something else and have a ludic and competitive function. The signifiers have remained, the signifieds have changed." [415-16]

"In sonorous symbolic forms, the form, the signifier, best resists transformations through time. However, the signified, the religious signification of the animal and nature imitations associated with these forms, are evanescent." [414]

"... in the Inuit culture, drum dance songs and throat-games are two different things which are never performed together. But they can be performed in the same festive event. Indeed, they have something in common: the concept of endurance. A good drum dancer is the one who may dance with the heavy drum as long as possible; good throat-game performers are the ones who make the katajjaq last as long as possible without failure." [410]


Inuit Throat-Games and Siberian Throat Singing:
A Comparative, Historical, and Semiological Approach
Jean-Jacques Nattiez