Room to go boom

Toronto’s Bonjay bang out
some basement-brewed bounce

BANGARANG GANG: Bonjay

By RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Brazil has its baile funk, England its grime, Angola its kuduro. Could a distinctly Canadian flavour of bounce be in the making? “That’s what we have in mind,” says DJ/producer Ian Swain, aka Pho, of the Toronto duo Bonjay. “I don’t know about an overall Canadian thing, because each city is so different, but if Toronto had a unique sound, what would it be?”

Very likely, it would start with Jamaican dancehall and bring in rap, electro, R&B, indie rock—hell, maybe a bit of bhangra too. That’s certainly what Pho and his vocalist partner Alanna Stuart concoct with their sharp tracks and wicked remixes of Kano, Bonde do Role and such.

The pair in fact connected in Ottawa, where Pho ran the Disorganized parties with Jokers of the Scene, and their personalities dovetailed—Stuart calls Pho “very methodical and very thorough,” while he says, “She connects with people, she’s out there, she’s much more of a doer—let’s bang it out.”

They first made their mark, before even settling on the Bonjay tag (island slang for “good gawd!”), with their thumping variations on TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “Sort of in the same way a smell can trigger a memory,” says Stuart, “certain beats and rhythms would trigger recollections of certain songs. When Ian played the Bionic Ras riddim, ‘Maps’ came into my head sporadically. It wasn’t as though it was a conscious effort to mix indie and dancehall. It just happened.”

What’s happened since then is the just-too-dope Bangarang Business mix CD, and next up is a 12-inch of originals (look out for “Faaat Gyal” and the airhorn-honking “Stumble”), covers and re-edits with Philly’s Flaming Hotz label. “I don’t know if we’re going to be doing any more mixtapes. A lot of people are going, ‘We wanna hear more Bonjay!’ And we want to play and sing more Bonjay.”

Stuart and Pho will likely reserve mixtape action for Boom, their monthly at an African restaurant in Kensington Market, based around dancehall rather than the more common electro theme but still open-ended and anything-goes. “It’s almost like Bangarang Business in party form,” says Stuart, “like a really raw house party in your Jamaican grandmother’s basement.”

AT DIVAN ORANGE TODAY, THURSDAY,
OCT. 2, 5 P.M., PWYC, AND WITH
THE BUG & WARRIOR QUEEN AT
THE PORTUGUESE ASSOCIATION
TONIGHT, 9:30 P.M., $15