Elisapie 
Inuktitut 

Inuktitut is a gift to Elisapie’s family and community and a blessing to those hearing familiar songs from a whole new perspective.

You know those “I was today years old” memes? These vaguely amusing adult-onset discovery moments usually leave me wondering what size and morphology of rock people have been living under, but every once in a while, they’re moments of enlightenment for me, as well. What do these memes have to do with Elisapie’s album, Inuktitut? Like the Nunavik-born and raised artist, I had one of those “today years old moments” as a youngster when I discovered that songs could be played and performed by many different artists. The concept of cover versions blew my mind, and I became obsessive about comparing two different versions of a song when I discovered they existed. 

All of the music Elisapie reinterprets on Inuktitut comes from specific childhood memories and remembrances where tradition and modernity collide. Of the inspiration for “Taimangalimaaq,” her interpretation of Cyndi Lauper’s classic ballad “Time After Time,” Elisapie says, “I was able to get through my pre-teen years, thanks to my Aunt Alasie, as my mother had neither the knowledge nor the experience to give me a crash course on puberty, fashion or social relationships…we were in the midst of the 80’s and modernity was shaking up our traditional methods. My mother’s generation had lived in Igloos, and the cultural changes were too swift.” As with “Uummati Attanarsimat,” her inspired and heartbreaking rendition of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” “Taimangalimaaq” is forever connected to memories of visits to family and discovering the gaudy and glorious excesses of 80s and 90s culture and fashion: “One of my favourite memories is listening to the radio with [my older girl cousins] and hearing Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ for the first time. It was like a lightning bolt, and I couldn’t separate the song or the artist from my older cousin Susie. For me, the song was all about her search for beauty, connection, love, and rising above pain.”

In an interview with CBC, Elispie describes the key criterion for her song choices on Inuktitut: “If it doesn’t make you cry, it’s out; if it makes you cry, it’s in.” Coming from a diversity of artists from Blondie and Lauper to Queen, Led Zepplin, and Pink Floyd, it would be difficult to find a throughline if you put the originals together on a single playlist. Translated into the Inuit language, though, Elisapie’s versions form a timeline that transcends language. It is evident in the way she performs the songs—with a delicateness and reverence usually reserved for hymns and traditional songs—just how deeply rooted in memory these songs are to her. Inuktitut is a gift to her family and community, as well as a blessing to those of us today years old, hearing these familiar songs from a whole new perspective.