The time Bonjay killed it at Halifax Pop Explosion 2011
Corbin Smith
Halifax’s annual festival for the commemoration of an over-carbonated soda can (or something like that) happened this past week. This year’s Halifax Pop Explosion brought around 150 acts plus 17,000 fans and industry delegates to the usually sleepy city referred to by some visitors as “Hamilton By The Sea.”
The Halifax Pop Explosion is promoted mainly as an international music festival, but the vast majority of the acts are made in Canada. Some of the highest caliber indie acts from Toronto played at the festival this past week, including Polaris Music Prize winners Fucked Up, as well as Polaris short-listers Stars and Timber Timbre. We did, however, catch one sweet hip-hop band from Taiwan.
After digesting our impressions of the festival, we can say, of all the bands we saw, Toronto’s Bonjay—with its soulful, dancehall rock—best personified the “explosion” aspect of the HPX. The band’s late-night set at The Seahorse Tavern saw a thoroughly packed, sweaty, and electric dance floor. The people in the crowd didn’t just enjoy Bonjay’s set—they ate that shit up. When the crowd demanded more at the end of the set, vocalist Alanna Stuart explained that the band had exhausted its possible tracks, and so the only way to continue the performance would be to repeat a song. But the energized crowd still wanted an encore, so the band reprised a song—and the people in the audience lost their minds twice as much as when they had heard the song the first time.
We spoke to Stuart immediately after Bonjay’s encore. About the crowd response, she told us, “It was amazing,” explaining that the audience’s reaction had been the kind of thing bands always hope for, but don’t really expect to happen.
Earlier in the week, Stuart told us she was planning to stay in Halifax for a while to work on songs for a new album, which we can’t wait to hear. Judging by the audience’s demand for more music, the new tunes will undoubtedly be met with sweaty, dancing, open arms, just as the band was at this year’s HFX.
