Following the release of her most recent album The Ballad of the Runaway Girl, JUNO Award winning artist Elisapie today shares her intimate and powerful NPR Tiny Desk concert. The performance features songs from her latest record and stories of her Inuit upbringing she previously explored on NPR's All Things Considered. Arguably the most significant work in the singer-songwriter's career, Elisapie recently spoke more about the album on the Good Life Project podcast and the Basic Folk podcast, before embarking on tour.
The Ballad of the Runaway Girl earned Elisapie a nomination for Indigenous Album of the Year at the 2018 JUNO Awards and a feature on the 2019 Polaris Music Prize shortlist. In addition to taking her all over North America and Europe, this intimate album has amassed great reviews. Rolling Stone France called the music a "delicately violent album that seduces as much as it questions," while NPR said Elisapie "synthesizes stories from her eventful life with hypnotic arrangements that channel '70s rock, indigenous folk music and the low, moody rumble of barnstormers like Tom Waits."
Ambassador for Inuit culture, Elisapie represents the wild and rough beauty of the North. Her new album is the musical tale of an expatriate Inuk. She sings about the different facets and challenges of being a woman, but also an adopted child, a mother and a lover. Through this exploration of her northern roots and her femininity, we learn about an Inuk who is proud of her origins and who works for the recognition of her people's historic difficulties. Elisapie's journey started when she was given up for adoption as a baby, on the tarmac of an airport. She went on to grow up in Salluit, dreaming of the South. Then came her escape to Montreal, where she started a family and left behind the extremes of the North.3/27: Montréal, QC @ Le National
4/24: Kingston, ON @ The Grad Club
4/25: Hamilton, ON @ Mills Hardware
4/26: Toronto, ON @ The Drake Hotel Underground
4/29: New York, NY @ Nublu 151
4/30 Philadelphia, PA @ Philadelphia Folksong Society
5/1: Portsmouth, NH @ The Loft
5/3: Burlington, VT @ FlynnSpace
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