Elisapie
Elisapie (Isaac) is a Inuit woman born in Salluit Canada and raised throughout different parts of the country. She started her music career very young and performed with Canadian band Sugluk when they performed in Salluit. She released her first solo album in 2010 and has been releasing music ever since. She is now living in Montreal creating music full time but she often visits her hometown as she enjoys it a lot.
I really enjoyed listening to her music and was calmed and relaxed by her beautiful voice along with good and interesting instrumentals. She experiments with her music and some of my favorite songs of hers are her covers that she translates in what I’m pretty sure is a dialect of Inuktitut. I personally enjoyed her cover of Blondie’s Heart of Glass which translated into Uummati Attanarsimat. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7BSjmxg9DY) She puts her own unique spins on the songs that include changing the instrumental quite a bit as well. I think it is exceptional how she is able to take songs that were popular in the states and make them accessible for other communities while also putting a twist to make it sound like her own. She also has other works as an artist and she created a movie dedicated to her grandfather documenting the life in Kangirsujuaq, a small Inuit village in Canada. I highly recommend checking out her music and if you know some popular American music you will already know some of her songs!
Indeed, she has a beautiful and relaxing voice. I am amazed at how many covers she has made of my favorite songs and all are enjoyable to listen to. I think what she is doing is extremely important and intentional: preserving the legacy of her dying language through classic songs that people will want to listen to. Many of her songs surprised me with how many views they have gotten on YouTube. While I think her cover songs are direct translations of the original song, it’s still valuable what she is doing. I watched her music video of “Qimatsilunga (I Want to Break Free)” which was especially moving as she included clips of a northern indigenous community and the people in them who seem to be balancing the modern way of life with their traditional culture.
I found this song particularly interesting as it draws a unique parallel with the artist I chose. Elisapie sings in her native Inuit language, which is something Wille Thrasher (also from Canada’s arctic) incorporated into his rock album “Spirit Child” in 1981. I think that it’s important for artists to continue to intertwine their heritage into their work, especially in today’s day and age. As you mentioned, this creates accessible and relatable media for underrepresented communities, but also acts as a way to preserve the arctic languages we discussed in class as going extinct.