WINTER DIARIES | ELISAPIE

In 2025, Inuk singer Elisapie Isaac gave a unique performance in Nunavik. The concert, called “Nunami: Where the Wind Sings”, was aired by Télé-Québec, and Quartz Co. was part of this great celebration. We met Elisapie to talk about music, winter, and the North.

Yes, always. We were colonized by the English, so the Anglican Christian church was part of my childhood. As a little girl, I remember going to church on Sunday mornings and hearing the beautiful Anglican music. I’m neither Christian nor religious, but it’s part of my DNA. My family is musical. My uncle had a rock’n’roll band in the 1960s, they were a bit like our Northern stars. It’s in my blood.

Back home, spring is when the deep cold and the constant darkness of winter finally begin to fade, around early April. Light slowly returns, and suddenly, by May, it’s daylight 24 hours a day. It’s still winter, snow covers everything, but it’s as if a tornado of energy takes over, creating a feeling that’s both incredibly freeing and hard to manage. Nature takes up all the space. We experience an overload of light and vital energy, but we’re also stuck in one place. There are no restaurants, no terraces, no movie theatres. There’s something very wild about it. I feel the same thing every time I go back. We’re restless, and we have to learn how to channel this excess of life. As children and teenagers, it was overwhelming, and you have to know how to deal with that.

During winter, I absorb small things very intensely, maybe because of the isolation and the darkness. I keep them inside, and they come out later in a more concrete way. I don’t write much during the summer; but winter being a time to pause, it's the moment where I listen to what’s happening in people’s minds and hearts.

Everything slows down. I try not to talk too much about schedules or what we’re going to do. That framework disappears. Back home, winter is a time of danger. It’s cold, hostile. You must be attentive, precise, and not waste energy unnecessarily. You enter hibernation mode. Of course, today we’re settled in villages, with jobs and schedules, but it’s so unnatural for us. It’s the opposite extreme. Winter is cold and dark, but it reconnects us to our instincts. It reminds us that they’re still there.

Oh yes, absolutely. There’s something truly magical about singing within that circle, in our traditional house made of snow. What moved me most wasn’t so much the setting itself, but the idea of the igloo as a place of celebration, a living space, not just a refuge. And to have us gather in Inukjuaq, with Inuit artists, friends and even my brother and non Inuit artists that I admire.

I sing a lot for myself, for my questions. Sometimes it brings even more questions than answers, but it helps me heal. It’s also something collective; our voices have been taken from us for so long... I also write to remind myself how fortunate I am to be able to reflect on certain subjects, and how fundamental that right is. Community is so important; the act of thinking together. I often write with my little cousins in mind.

In 2026, I will have the opportunity to tour Western Canada and the United States, connecting with new audiences. It will also be a year of creation, as I begin writing my next album — an intimate return to the artistic process that deeply inspires me. At the same time, with Les Films Sanajik, we will continue a project that is especially close to my heart by producing, for the sixth consecutive year, Le Grand Solstice, a musical and television event that has become a major gathering and a celebration of National Indigenous Peoples Day.
Finally, an animated short film that I co-directed and co-wrote with artist Marc Séguin will be released. This meaningful collaboration is produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

For 2026, I wish to immerse myself fully in both the intimacy and the intensity of creation and writing.