Inngirtut (iŋ.ɡiʁ.tut)

Among the Unughuit people of Umingmak, there is a long tradition of crafting personal lullabies, known as Inngirtut (singular: Inngirtuq). These songs are crafted individually for each infant in a community, and are used to help calm and soothe the baby to sleep. Parents will frequently begin to work on a child's inngirtuq before they are born, but the majority of the song will be developed during the infant's first year of life, and will be adjusted and elaborated by all the members of the community who interact with the baby. An inngirtuq is often described as a song by outsiders, but the Unughuit incorporate more elements than are traditionally encompassed by the word 'song', such as specific movements and objects that can acompany words, melody, and non-verbal sounds (vocalized, instrumental, or found sounds). As the child grows older, they have more and more input into their inngirtuq, and it continues to change rapidly during their first several years. After this, the form of the song tends to be more stable, and most Unughuit adults can remember and perform their own inngirtuq throughout their life, and will incorporate elements of it into th songs they craft for their communities' children.

In some Unughuit communities, the inngirtuq is only the beginning of a biographical catalog of songs, that span their entire lifetime. They continue the theme of the inngirtuq into late childhood and adulthood, creating new songs for themselves at every stage of life. Community members regularly contribute to and comment on each other's songs, and no single person can be said to be a sole author of their own catalog. On special occasions, a person will perform their entire collection of personal songs for the community, telling the story of their life. Some people are so well loved that their biography songs are performed by others after their passing, and it is considered a great honor to have one's life commemorated in this fashion. A new tradition in some of the southernmost Unuguhuit communities is the tutingirtuq or tribe song, which blends several individual songs together to tell the story of the community itself. In those groups, certain elders have begun to record the individual songs on caribou vellum, using a notation system devised to capture all the elements that make up the performance.

Primary Related Location

Umingmak

Related Ethnicities