Celebrating Indigenous Cultures

Elisapie will perform on the Main Stage on June 25th. Photo by Leeor Wild.

The Ottawa Jazz Festival takes place on the traditional unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. We take great pride to continue to celebrate indigenous cultures from all corners of the world.

Presented by Sauders Farm Elisapie, co-headlines the Main Stage on June 25th with Kathleen Edwards. Elisapie is a multi talented Canadian Inuk musician, broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, activist, and actress. Born and raised in Salluit, the second northernmost Inuit community in Quebec, she moved to Montreal in 1999 to pursue communication studies. She followed her passion for music and in 2005, as part of the musical project Taima, she picked up a Juno Award for Aboriginal Recording of the Year. She went on to release her first solo album in 2010 and has since released 5 projects under the name Elisapie. Her latest work is titled Inuktitut and is entirely a cover album of well known songs reproduced in her own style and sung in her native tongue.

Winnipeg-based, Ojibway musician Chuck Copenace, brings the brass to the OLG Stage on June 28th. Copenace was raised in the Ojibway Animikee Wa Zhing #37 First Nation. As a junior high school music student in Kenora, Ontario, he took up the trumpet and never looked back. His recent project Oshki Manitou expands dramatically on his previous work as a trumpet player, arranger, and composer, fusing contemporary interpretations of sweat-lodge melodies with jazz and elements of dance and electronica.

Chief Adjuah, formerly known as Christian Scott, is a sonic architect, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, designer of innovative technologies and musical instruments who performs on the Main Stage on June 26th. He began performing under the name  aTunde Adjuah in 2012 as a way of reflecting his family’s West African and Indigenous lineage, as well as their roots in the Maroon culture and Mardi Gras Indian tradition of New Orleans. Today, the multi-award winning trumpet player is Chieftan of Xodokan Nation of maroons. In 2023, Adjuah was also named Grand Griot of New Orleans at the Maafa Commemoration hosted by the Ashe Cultural Arts Center.

Hand To Earth was born during an Australia Art Orchestra residency in the isolated Tasmanian highlands. On June 22nd at the NAC Fourth Stage Daniel Yipininy Wilfred, a Yolŋu songman, and Sunny Kim, a Korean vocalist, effortlessly developed a rapport that transcends continents and cultures while expressing a fundamentally human bond. Their vocal styles are integrated with minimalist soundscapes which are created by trumpeter/composer Peter Knight, clarinetist Aviva Endean, and yidaki player David Yipininy Wilfred. Singing in his native tongue, Daniel is the custodian of Yolŋu manikay (or songs) from South East Arnhem Land that date back more than 40,000 years. This is the world’s oldest music tradition that is still being practiced today. Presented in collaboration with Jazztopad Festival (National Forum of Music), Wroclaw, Poland