Meet the sound techs amping the Edge of the World Music Festival
Have you enjoyed the 2024 Edge of the World Music Festival, the bands and the incredible sound that made them so enjoyable and perfect?
Meet a few of the people behind the scenes.
Adil Jessa, AJ, is president and owner of Pro-Spec Production Services. Located in Burnaby, Pro-Spec handles live audio at festivals all over B.C.
“If nobody comes up to us and says anything, we did a great job,” AJ said. “We want people to leave with a smile on their face — that’s enough.”
AJ thanked former artistic director Roeland Denooji for getting his crew started at Edge of the World and the many volunteers at this year’s festival, including their host Bill Lore and current director Pete Moore.
“Hopefully the art of live music continues up here, because the talent on this island is unreal,” AJ said.
Ben Huntus is a live sound technician who works at concerts, small shows, and festivals big and small.
Huntus first got into music the summer his family moved to Yellowknife. He didn’t know anyone, so before he started school there he spent all his time learning bass and guitar. Later, he started playing in bands with friends.
Huntus has Ojibwe ancestors and his parents told him he has cousins on Haida Gwaii.
During the opening ceremony of the first Edge of the World Music Festival he came to work at, Huntus said, an Indigenous singer sang in Ojibwe.
“It was so powerful — it was the first time ever that I heard Ojibwe language in that way and it was by someone from my family who had driven the culture on,” Huntus said.
“To see how the Haida Nation and the people here accept everybody is just incredible.”
Alexis Douglas says she travels all through Turtle Island doing sound, mostly at festivals. At Edge of the World, she is the monitor engineer, serving the musicians on stage.
Being one of the few female sound technicians, Douglas is part of soundgirls.org — a global collective that addresses diversity and gender gaps in the music and sound industry.
“I got into music through being lucky to have an awesome music teacher in high school who started a program called Rock School,” she said. The final exam was a live show.
“We formed rock bands, threw rock concerts and musical theater,” she said, adding that she was always really keen on the technical side.
“On Haida Gwaii I love doing sound surrounded by trees in open air because the sound is not trapped by reflective walls like in an arena.”