Elisapie Isaac wows audience at sold-out Ottawa show

Elisapie sings May 2 at the National Arts Centre’s Northern Scene. (PHOTO BY LISA GREGOIRE)

Polar pop star Elisapie, an engaging combination of poise and talent, charmed a packed audience at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre 4th Stage May 2, demonstrating to new and returning fans that her future as a musical performer is secure.

The small, casual, café-style venue, with it’s round tables and bar service, seemed perfectly suited for the show, which attracted a sold-out crowd of Ottawa patrons and, from the sounds of Inuktitut praise shouted from the back of the hall, a few Inuit as well.

“I know you are supposed to be sitting in front of the TV watching hockey tonight,” she said, referring to Game 1 of the Stanley Cup quarter-finals between Ottawa and Montreal that coincided with last night’s performance, part of the Northern Scene festival. “I see a few men out there. To the men: we love you!”

Isaac, who now simply goes by her first name and lives in Montreal, was a shape-shifter, alternating seamlessly between French, English and Inuktitut and also between catchy, rhythmic pop songs and the more haunting melodies which describe her Nunavik upbringing.

“This is a song about spring. Spring is not just about getting nearly naked in the park,” she said to a spate of laughter in the crowd. “Spring is about finding freedom again on the land. It’s important to get out on the land, especially when you live in a city with all those big buildings.”

She then launched into “Salluit,” one of the most memorable songs of the night with its wistful and longing repetition: “Where I’m from, where I’m from.”

Her performance was backed by four multi-instrumental band members who provided the creative percussion and catchy guitar lines necessary to win over a new audience.

Born to an Inuk mother and Newfoundland father and then raised by an adoptive Inuit family, Isaac considers the North, “not at the end of the earth,” according to her website bio, ”rather, it is at the centre.”

She has released two solo albums so far — her latest, Travelling Love, came out in late 2012 — and won a Juno in 2005 for Aboriginal Recording of the Year as part of the duo Taima, with guitarist and composer Alain Auger.

But, as a shape-shifter, she has also worked in media starting with radio, television and eventually film. Her 2003 National Film Board of Canada documentary,” If the Weather Permits/Si le temps le permet,” won several prizes for its portrayal of the changing lifestyle of Nunavik Inuit.

Isaac was also featured by CBC Television’s 8th Fire, a special series about the new and emerging relationship between Canada’s aboriginal peoples and their mainstream neighbours. In one segment, Elisapie is shown returning to Kuujjuaq to lead youth workshops on music and performance.

“It was an amazing experience for me. As an Inuk girl from the North, I really feel the next 10 years are crucial in terms of the cultural and arts world,” she told her interviewers.

“I’m really excited to be part of this transition where we feel completely free and we want to reinvent and use our culture. I think we’re in a really fun time.”

Elisapie was preceded on stage by Yukon’s Sarah MacDougall, a folk-pop singer-songwriter originally from Sweden. She got the crowd going with songs about love and loss, travelling and staying still and about the land and weather which often dominate a northern songwriter’s repertoire.

With a style that’s a cross between Lynn Miles and Martha Wainwright, MacDougall earned plenty of applause and audience participation despite revealing at the end of the show that this was the first time she and fellow band members had performed together.