Movies of War

1 of 6 2 of 6 Juno-Award winning singer Elisapie hails from Salluit, in northern Quebec, where she was born in 1977 on March 13. So her birthday falls one day after her planned performance at the Vogue on Thursday. You might assume from the language she sings in on the 2023 album Inuktitut is her native language, with that providing a window into her background. The whole concept of the record is to translate popular songs—by Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, Metallica, the Rolling Stones, and the like—into Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit. There are, in northern Quebec two related but distinct Indigenous groups, the Inuit and the Innu, so I wanted to check that I understood the differences before we proceeded. Reached via Zoom in Quebec, Elisapie clarifies things for me.“Innu are a First Nations people a little bit south, in the Labrador area," she shares. "It’s sometimes misunderstood—they’re kind of northern people, and they’re First Nations, but they’re different.” So okay: she is Inuit, not Innu. But it quickly turns out that I’ve made, in a past article on her, a different mistake by referring to her as an Inuit, because the word “Inuit” is in fact, plural—something I had never understood previously. “When we say one person, we say Inuk, with a K,” she explains. “So we say, ‘I’m Inuk, from the Inuit people.’ ” Aha! So figuratively speaking, is Salluit the place she “ran away” from, the place implicitly referred to in the title of her previous album, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl? “Well, I guess you could see it like that," Elisapie offers. "But we’re constantly moving and searching, and when you’re from a small town, so strongly community-oriented, to move and to leave your town and family, the land, there has to be something strong that pulls you. I just felt like this song that was written by my uncles in the '60s, ‘The Ballad of the Runaway Girl’, became such a beautiful, metaphoric way of seeing my life and making peace with that side of me that needs to explore. I’ve always loved that song.” At least one of Elisapie’s uncles, George Kakayuk, played in the band Sugluk, with whom Elisapie also performed when she was younger; people who have checked out Native North America, the essential anthology curated by former Straight staffer Kevin James Howes, will likely best remember the band from their song “Fall Away”. Speaking of errors, when the CBC initially released “The Ballad of the Runaway Girl,” it screwed up the song title on the label, where it is identified as “The Ballad of the Running Girl”, though you can hear very clearly that the band is singing the word “runaway”. The song starts at about the seven-minute mark in this clip. Video of Sugluk - CBC Discography (1975) Inuit Covering that song, in fact, was the beginning of Elisapie's journey to Inuktitut.“‘The Ballad of the Runaway Girl’ definitely woke something in me. I wanted to remember, to re-look at what things were going on in the past, when we were kids. I wanted to relive; I wanted to go there.” With Inuktitut, One might wonder if the decision to do covers of such much-loved pop tunes—Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, say, covered as “Taimangalimaaq”— might also have been calculated to deliver her a wider audience. Certainly the mainstage crowd at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival this past summer loved hearing these songs, presented in this unique way, even cheering when she told them, “I stole these songs from white people.”If it was, indeed, a piece of shrewd planning, to broaden her demographic, it was a brilliant one. She chuckles at the observation.“I would have loved being, I don’t know, somebody who works for a very pop-oriented big label, and thinking of this genius idea, and saying, ‘Yeah, we’re going to make millions with this idea!’. But it’s not my place. First of all, I’m not a mainstream artist, and I’ll probably never be. I’m very happy with this place where I’ve evolved and healed through music. And of course, making a living doing shows—I’m very fortunate to have that! But in reality, I know my place as an artist.”Elisapie continues with, “I didn’t make this album, necessarily, so I could reach a white audience. It was really something I always wanted to do: a small, quick, easy album of cover songs, and bring it to my family, to people I love. I felt like I needed to do that, almost like a secret album. And then when I started listening to these songs and realized 'I may have an idea, may have an album that’s strong enough and that feels personal enough'. And something opened in me. Once it opened, every song that evoked something, didn’t just evoke something light: it made me cry.”The associations she got from those songs went beyond her own personal experiences.“Sometimes it was a friend, or it was a cousin’s suicide, or a Polaroid sepia image I have as a little girl with my babysitter’s cousins, getting up and dancing," Elisapie relates. "And I started remembering not just the dance, but the feeling that things are so new and modern. And we were so innocent! A lot of times there was that innocence that would really get to me. We just didn’t know what was happening. Everything was so new and fresh. And a few years from then, in the '80s, a suicide pandemic started in the North.”At the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, she told the audience about her cousin’s suicide, but I didn’t remember which song was tied into the story. It was, in fact, her cover of Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” (given as “Qimatsilunga”). The original, she notes, was very personal to her cousin. In fact, the music of bands like Queen and other giants gave Elisapie, her relatives, and her friends a way to break free of daily life. Dancing to favourite songs was a huge outlet, including for her cousin. “He loved dancing," she remembers. "And my cousin hung himself when I was a teenager, and for me, that song is very much related to him. But ‘Wish You Were Here’ is, also.” Video of Elisapie - Qimatsilunga (I Want to Break Free) (Official Music Video) A timeless Pink Floyd classic, "Wish You Were Here" also extends back to others who have passed, she explains, providing a feeling a connection to her parents and past generations.“It was a way to connect with them during mourning," she recalls. "And when I was a teenager, I would just find myself in my other cousin’s room, in the dark, listening to music, having smoked some weed.” On those nights Pink Floyd was often on the stereo. “For me, that song brings me to a whole new level where I feel like our pain is being taken away," Elisapie says of "Wish You Were Here". "That arrangement we did with the [brass section] the Westerlies, I felt like I was almost healed.” The group vocal on "Wish You Were Here", given as “Qaisimalaurittuq” on Inuktitut, was one of the most transfixing aspects of her folk fest performance—the crowd was silent and reverent. It’s very pleasing to know this music, white people’s, or not, can be so universally moving. Elisapie doesn’t get into the cost of licensing such famous songs, but I think that can be easily read between the lines.“I would speak to [producer] Joe [Grass] when I had a song and go, ‘Oh, shit, it’s a very popular song again! I have to find a way to make it not these pop songs that would play on the radio!’ But every time I tried to find something that was a little more ‘left-field’—not as popular—it felt like it didn’t evoke any particular memory or emotions. So we realized, 'I am just going to follow my emotions and memories, and funnily, it’s a lot of these big hits!' It was a lot of white people’s music, but that’s what got to us.” Video of Elisapie - Quviasukkuvit (If It Makes You Happy) (Official Music Video) What she remembers isn't just hearing the songs on radio or while hanging out, but also how they connected with her on a deeply emotional level. “I kind of felt like they were going through another filter," Elisapie says. "It felt like Inuit songs in a way, because I guess they really got to our hearts. That’s how personal it got for me, and it became a much longer process. At the end of the album I realized that this is probably my most personal album.” So how did she encounter these songs? Besides the radio, she got the “coolest job” when she was 15 as a radio host and producer in Nunavik.“Then I would have access to all these very old vinyls, and that’s where I had access to Pink Floyd, Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones," Elisapie says. "They were all so meaningful to me.”She even encountered Inuktitut translations of songs like “Four Strong Winds” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” “So I was already kind of immersed in this, not being afraid to take a song and make it ours," Elisapie continues. "We were really into these popular classic rock songs and folk songs, and that’s why I really went there on the album, because that’s what people were listening to.”Actual Indigenous musics, like the early recordings of (fellow Inuk) Willie Thrasher, were harder to find, but local radio stations would have his material on old cassettes.“But now Willie Thrasher has his album Spirit Child available; you can have it online, so that’s pretty amazing!”It was, in fact, hearing Elisapie do Thrasher’s “Wolves Don’t Live by the Rules” at the folk fest that caught my ear. The program write-up for the festival had made clear that she’d be doing Blondie and such, and I was enjoying those songs well enough, but based on what was written, I wasn’t expecting her to cover Thrasher.Unlike Sheryl Crow or Led Zeppelin or Leonard Cohen or the other artists she covered that day, I’ve met Thrasher, and even had him pick me out of a crowd at the Filberg festival, pointing to me in recognition from our past interaction. Hearing Elisapie do one of his songs, giving it such a vibrant, fulsome interpretation, made the hair on my arms raise up. That brings us to an important side note: while the cover tunes definitely are attention-getters, Elisapie’s originals are also stunners. Consider the opening track on The Ballad of the Runaway Girl, “Arnaq”, a powerful feminist exhortation for men to not abuse women and to engage with their own healing. Video of Elisapie - Arnaq While the singer's intention is to mostly focus on Inuktitut songs at the Vogue, that number will definitely be on her setlist as well.Noting that "Arnaq" is a song that's always on set lists when she plays live, Elisapie says, "We can never not do that again. That feminine power that even the men embrace and celebrate, that feeling of letting go and owning your space… it’s such a powerful song, each time. It’s about not engaging in violence against yourself, because we’ve seen our men suffer so much, not being able to embrace that we were meant to really collaborate and be a team, not being able to face their fears, their trauma."I think that has done a lot of harm," she continues, "to us, to themselves, to their sons, to their kids. It’s also a way to remind them that you are meant to be here: we need you! Inuit men are so soft-spoken, so sweet, and I think sometimes they forget that it is okay to be that. Life has been so harsh on them!” There’s more that could be said. Elisapie, besides being a singer, is a filmmaker, and made a documentary about Salluit called If the Weather Permits, which gives a picture of life in her hometown. It can be seen for free on the NFB website and is highly recommended (though some very fresh raw meat is consumed: culture shock trigger warning!). But I forsook asking about her filmmaking to focus on an odd final distinction: Elisapie is on a postage stamp, one of six “Indigenous Leaders” who were put on stamps in 2024. Nardwuar and Art Bergmann may have received the Order of Canada, but Elisapie is the only musician I’ve met who is on a stamp! She laughs. “I’ll be honest with you, we don’t ever think of our career and say, ‘One day I want to be on a stamp!’ When that arrived, I was just like, ‘What? Why?’”Her band found it funny, and her tour manager has teased her about it. She does acknowledge that Canada Post did “such beautiful work”, and that she was pleased with it, but adds that, at first, “It was actually my management who thought it was a huge deal; I was so busy then, I had just released the album, so I had so many things going on, so: ‘Okay, cool, it’s an honour, thank you.’ But I got quickly over it.” But the announcement that she was being chosen turned out not to be the biggest part of the story.“It was more when they invited us to an event, here in Montreal; they invited my friends, they even brought my mother from the North, and she stayed in a hotel," Elisapie shares. "They were so kind. And then it was revealed in a very big way in a museum, and then we had this very surreal moment where my kids pulled it with my Mom”.She mimes pulling aside rope or curtain, as in an unveiling. “And then it was there!," Elisapie continues. "I didn’t realize it was going to make people so emotional. It’s just my face, but I know that it means a lot for the community, for the kids, for Inuit to see: ‘Oh wow, that’s a girl from my town, what the hell!’, you know? So it was an honour, definitely.” Elisapie plays the Vogue on Thursday (March 12). Join the discussion Facebook comments not loading? Please check your browser settings to ensure that it is not blocking Facebook from running on straight.com