For ethnologically oriented folk-music fans, listening to Elisapie Isaac's There Will Be Stars is sure to challenge some deep-rooted prejudices—not because she sings in her native language, Inuktitut, but because, very often, she doesn't. “Where's the throat singing?” they might ask, referring to the exotic and sometimes deeply erotic vocal sounds that have become emblematic of the Canadian North. But there's no throat singing on the former Taima vocalist's solo debut. Instead, There Will Be Stars asks one simple question: why shouldn't an Inuk make pop music?

“Yeah!” says Isaac, reached at home in Montreal. Speaking in Québécois-accented English, she explains that she enjoys everything from '50s rock 'n' roll to Leonard Cohen, as do most of her peers. “I mean, that's what we've listened to since the past 40 years,” she continues. “We're very influenced by Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and country music, and we've been making music like this for a long time. There are many other artists like me who've made albums in the last 20 years, and we're all very touched by folk music and the Americana sound. So it's nothing new. I didn't invent that at all.”

What she has invented, however, is a new and poetic approach to Inuktitut. Most of There Will Be Stars is sung in English, with one track—Québécois folksinger and filmmaker Richard Desjardins's “Moi, Elsie”—in French. But it's the three songs in the Inuk language that stand out.

“Inuk” was inspired by the suicide of a cousin—an all-too-common occurrence in the desolate North. “It starts by saying how he once walked these lands, like many others before him,” Isaac explains. “But then he couldn't even feel the cold anymore. We're from a very harsh, cold environment, but he was just numb, I think. So that's how the song starts, and then it ends up saying, ”˜When did Inuk become weak? We're strong, very proud people.'

“It's a song that sounds very harsh, but it's a very uplifting song at the same time,” she adds. “It's very direct. So it's a great song, and it's fun to do in the show also.”

Album opener “Navvaatara”, in contrast, compares the thought of a lover to a warm breeze from the south.

“Nobody would really say that, because it's so not realistic,” Isaac says, laughing. “Inuktitut is a very straightforward language. You don't hear anything superpoetic, like you do in English or French. So I had to invent a lot of new ways of talking, like a lot of metaphor. But it's fun to dress my language up and make it beautiful—and it shows that there's new ways of thinking and of seeing things, too.”

For a complete list of who's performing when and on what stage at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, please go to www.thefestival.bc.ca/.