For a local indie music duo to get a favourable review in the New York Times is verging on the miraculous, particularly when the group — Toronto’s Bonjay – has no physical distribution in the US. But that didn’t stop music critic Jon Pareles from lauding the duo’s electro-dancehall sound in his November 28 review.
So how did Bonjay’s Ian “Pho” Swain and singer Alanna Stuart celebrate? They spent an afternoon last week at the Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre teaching at-risk youth how to build beats using Ableton Live music software and sharing their experience about how to create a music career one small step at a time.
Broughtupsy, the EP reviewed by Pareles, is a six-track follow-up to last year’s terrific “Gimme Gimme” single (both available on iTunes).
Swain and Stuart met in Ottawa in 2006 just as he was breaking into music production and she was looking to take her singing out of church and into the studio. Ottawa’s Church of God, a West Indian Pentecostal parish, gave Stuart her first taste of performing: “It was free lessons,” she says, “and church can be boring. You get there for Sunday school at 10 am and we wouldn’t leave until 1:30 or 2 pm but if you break it up with choir practice or singing hymnals, it can be fun. I’m grateful for the experience.”
The music on Broughtupsy is hard to pin down: “People keep assigning the electro tag to it,” says Stuart, “so I think it’s cool that the Times picked up on the dancehall influence.”
Swain, who started as a DJ and still spins sets on occasion, describes the Bonjay sound as “bass-heavy, indie soul music. If you come expecting dancehall you’re not going to hear Sean Paul at all. We’re trying to represent a much wider range of human experience than just partying.”
The duo has just returned home from touring in the U.S. and western Canada where they’ve been focusing on their roots in community and campus radio while playing small dates and doing guest spots at weekly or monthly parties. The live experience is influencing what the duo does in the studio – they’re hard at work on a full-length album — expected in fall 2011 — that Swain says will be “messier” than their output to date.
“As much as the creative side matters a lot to us,” says Swain, “the social nature of music and the structure of how you do things matters too. I’m kind of glad we didn’t get major features or the cover of some magazine with this release. Broughtupsy was something we did while we were working full-time day jobs. It’s really nice that there’s interest and things are bubbling but I don’t think we’ll really start to realize our vision until the album is made.”
In the meantime, there’s a support team to build anchored by Monteral-based manager Guillaume Decouflet. “Now we’re looking at a music publishing company and a booking agent and a label, as well,” says Stuart. “We have a lawyer in New York who takes care of a lot of this stuff. Ideally we’d like a large indie that has the infrastructure to support our release without insisting on too much control.”
Adds Pho: “We’re not the kind of people who could change our creative vision because some A&R guy wants a different direction. We’ve tried to build up something that’s really unique and we’ve put a lot of thought into it.”
Bonjay’s emphasis on the creative extends to image and marketing. The visuals for their first two efforts were pulled together by Toronto artist Hanna Hur and when I ask to take some pictures at the end of our interview, Stuart convinces me to use some shots they’ve just had done by photographer May Truong (the black and whites above).
“We really lucked out with Hanna,” says Pho, “because as we’ve been touring we’ve come to recognize that the visual identity of the music matters more now than ever before because so many people discover music online and they may see you before they hear you. So it’s important that the visuals capture the feeling of the music.”
Stuart and Swain team up for a guest DJ set at the Nuff Said party at Wrong Bar (1279 Queen West) January 14. The following month they’re off to the Yukon for the annual Frostbite Festival.
“If we achieve success elsewhere in Canada and internationally we’ll have to do some educating on how truly cool Toronto is,” says Swain. “It’s no surprise that this music is coming from this place. We take our diversity for granted because the generation behind us doesn’t even think about it, they live it every day. But when you go to other places, then you realize how special Toronto really is. I think this is a city whose best days are still ahead of it in terms of producing something that’s globally unique and I hope we can be part of that.”
Live photo by Angie Bird, black and white images by May Truong, cover art by Hanna Hur
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They’re also performing at Engineers Without Borders’ (http://www.ewb.ca) 10th Anniversary Gala
http://conference2011.ewb.ca/gala/
Excited to see them!
I adore these two — though I have yet to get myself out to one of their shows. A friend put me onto their EP. Can’t wait for the full-length. Great to see them appear here on Live with Culture!