The recently concluded Borneo Sonic Music Festival 2023 is believed to have become the most attended paying concert in Kuching, and Sarawak in general, with some 31,000 fans said to attend the festival.
Festival founder, Steven Au, disclosed to us that about 13,000 came during the first day, with another 19,000 estimated on the second day.
Prior to this, the Rainforest World Music Festival is believed to have held the biggest figures for a paying concert in Sarawak, with 23,600 fans said to have attended the three day festival at its peak in 2019.
Post concert photos shared by Borneo Sonic Music Festival on their social media page show a packed field as performers from Dolla, Suho, BELLE SISOSKI, Havana Brown and Taeyang became major highlights of the second and last day.
The photos below are taken from Borneo Sonic Facebook page (Photo credit: @kaikai0701 @bryanthenyc @thankyouhariz).
Reaching international fans
Online, Suho and Taeyang fans from both EXO-L and VIPs posted and reposted videos from the festival ground.
Fans of the duo, including non-Malaysians, shared their joy of watching and seeing photos and fancam videos from the festival, indirectly putting Kuching on the map for K-pop entertainment.
Based on what we observed on Twitter, fans from Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand and Europe were resharing content shared on social media by festival goers.
This is not new, but the hype surrounding the festival is indeed unmatched, at least by Sarawak’s standards.
Inside the stadium, we also had confirmation that there was a number of Indonesians, Bruneians, Singaporeans who came for the festival.
Taeyang honors Kuching, others honor Malaysia
To us, the most pleasing part of the whole concert was when Taeyang made sure he would mention Kuching when he interacted with the fans.
While other international performers mentioned thier joy of being in Malaysia, none said it more often then Taeyang, which not only pleased us, but the crowd who was largely made up of Kuching people.
The camfan video below is one instance of when Taeyang said something about Kuching.
Taeyang also tried to speak Bahasa Malaysia with his “Aku cinta kamu” getting a huge cheer from to the crowd.
He also promised to come back again soon with greater shows.
Still trending after 24 hours
What’s interesting about Borneo Sonic Music Festival 2023 is how it remained trending online after 24 hours passing by.
This is indeed unprecedented for any event in Kuching or Sarawak for that matter. Even the annual award winning Rainforest World Music Festival, or last year’s Borneo Music Festival, had not hit such feat to date.
At the time of writing, Borneo Sonic MF was still trending in Malaysia on twitter, and popular on Facebook as well.
Related terms such as Suho, Taeyang, CL and HYO also still came up in the trending list.
On TikTok, videos of the event continue to pop up like wild fire.
Kuching officially has a bigger concert venue other than SCV
Aside from showing the world Kuching is ready for major concerts, Borneo Sonic Music Festival 2023 had also showed that Stadium Sarawak is a worthy and capable venue for concerts.
The preffered go-to concert venue prior to this was the Sarawak Cultural Village (SCV), but SCV, despite its charm, has limited space for expansion, and is a bit out of town.
The Sarawak Stadium on the other hand is strategically located at the side of Kuching City, and boast ample parking for such an event.
With the success of BSMF 2023, Kuching, and Sarawak now officially has a venue which can hold at least 30-40K concert goers at one time as well.
The festival therefore may have opened gates for more massive concerts in Kuching in the near future.
Borneo Sonic Music Festival 2024
With this years edition of the festival now done and dusted, eyes are all on Borneo Sonic Music Festival 2024.
Prior to the concert, Steven had already told us that he is already planning for another Borneo Sonic Music Festival in 2024.
Tonight, he confirmed that he is planning to have artist from Indonesia, Taiwan, China, Singapore, America, Australia, Malaysia, and maybe Vietnam or Thailand.
Interestingly, there’s no Koreans in the line-up he mentioned, but then, having the likes of Jay Chou, Tzuyu, or Taylor Swift wouldn’t be too bad either, right? (Just saying lah.. No names have been confirmed yet).
He told us that he and his team will also absorb mistakes and feedbacks they made this year and improve next year.
Kuching as a major concert venue
With many festival goers also commending the crowd at BSMF 2023, it looks like Kuching can indeed start preparing for an influx of visitors whenever there is a major concert held in town.
It is indeed a good mix for Kuching in general because there is now a venue for such an event, and with such a fun crowd, you can expect concerts to draw in more tourist as well.
That said, let’s also hope that this is the start of more good things for Kuching and that Kuching will continue to grow as a hub for major concerts in Malaysia.
