BONJAY AT THE BON-FIRE
Dancehall duo return for festival
It’s a commonly accepted nugget of dance-floor etiquette that you don’t interrupt the DJ when he or she is mixing the music that’s making everyone dance.
But singer-songwriter Alanna Stuart, who’s one-half of the duo Bonjay, couldn’t help herself when she joined friends at a party in Ottawa’s Chinatown neighbourhood more than a decade ago. Though raised in Orléans, she had just moved back to Ottawa to attend university, she recalls, and was “hungry for something more, musically and culturally.
“I remember walking up the narrow staircase to the attic, and hearing this remix of Fela Kuti’s Zombie. I was mesmerized by the polyrhythms, the freshness of it. I saw the crowd sweating profusely and almost convulsing to the music,”shesays.
It was one of the legendary Disorganized parties — a monthly residency hosted by an Ottawa DJ collective — and Stuart recognized people she knew from the punk, hip hop and soul scenes. She had a revelation.
“I realized, ‘This is who I am,’ ” she says. “‘This is where I need to be.’ And playing that song in this tiny little DJ booth was Ian (Swain). I didn’t know whether he was a producer or not but I ran up to him and explained that I was a pop/R&B singer wanting to do something different. He was in the middle of mixing and I broke a cardinal rule of interrupting a DJ mix. He was like, ‘Uh, OK, here’s my card.’ I just trusted his instinct and that has not wavered.”
In the studio, Swain, aka DJ Pho, forgave her transgression.
“If I hadn’t met Alanna, I don’t think I would be making music in the same way,” he says. “Basically I come from DJing and whatever nexus of music I’m playing. Alanna comes from singing in the church, and the 2000 indie scene is where she found her voice. Where we meet in the middle is dancehall, so it really is unique.”
The soul singer and the DJ made an EP, Broughtupsy, that came out in 2010 and earned them a cult following.
Then came a long period of artistic development that finally ended earlier this year when they released Lush Life, an album that Exclaim! magazine describes as “one of the very best R&B albums of 2018.” A polished mix of R&B, techno and dancehall, with a songwriter’s sensibility, it was also longlisted for the Polaris Prize.
For Stuart, the artistic development involved studying theatre in London and dance in Montreal, while Swain delved into music theory, and learned to play all the instruments.
The songs on Lush Life explore how we live in cities, a theme that emerged thanks in part to Swain’s day job as an economist researching the growth of cities. He and musician/consultant Andrew Vincent co-authored the 2015 report Connecting Ottawa Music: A Profile of Ottawa’s Music Industries, which analyzed the state of Ottawa’s music scene and recommended ways for it to expand. The report sparked the creation of the Ottawa Music Industry Coalition and led to the city implementing a music strategy.
“Visiting Ian at his workplace, I’d
be privy to certain conversations about urban planning or music in cities so I feel like those ideas had set in my subconscious,” Stuart says. “And also just being a black woman in Canada, it’s no surprise that ideas of identity and diversity would be expressed lyrically.”
Although Bonjay is now based in Toronto, they can see how being from Ottawa led to their unique musical style. “Sometimes people don’t see Ottawa as being a place where the unexpected can happen,” Stuart says. “Being a government town and a university town, it can be a bit conservative and we have to work so much harder to create something different. We don’t necessarily have this template for how to do that so we have to create our own way, unencumbered by industry standards and trends and things like that.”
“Merging dancehall with the indie songwriter side of music doesn’t always make sense and isn’t always easy,” adds Swain. “The idea that we took these influences and we built on them and took them in our own unique di- rection, that is the greatest fulfilment I could ever get.”
The duo hints at big things to come over the next few months, and they promise it won’t take another eight years to create more music. In the meantime, they’re thrilled to return to hometown Ottawa to play Arboretum’s BonFire festival.
“Bonjay is from Ottawa’s Chinatown, and Bonjay is from the Clocktower Pub in the Glebe, and to come back to play in Ottawa always feels like a homecoming,” says Stuart. “It will be nice to play outdoors because it’s home, and also because it reminds me of Jamaica, where I’ve never been to an indoor party or show. Ever. It’s always under the open sky, and there’s this feeling of freedom and expanse. I just want to open my arms wide and sing.”
Merging dancehall with the indie songwriter side of music doesn’t always make sense and isn’t always easy. The idea that we took these influences and we built on them and took them in our own unique direction, that is the greatest fulfilment I could ever get.
IAN SWAIN