Here To Stay: Jalen Ngonda Interviewed

Jalen Ngonda has a voice from the heavens. The sweetest of soul music, rendered in pristine fashion, he’s able to balance an encyclopaedic knowledge of seminal R&B 45s from the 50s and 60s to a desire to speak truthfully, and get his own experiences down on record. It’s working, too – debut album ‘Come Around And Love Me’ was a stunning achievement, a breakout moment coupled to a sold out show at London’s KOKO and a bravura set at Glastonbury. It’s an old sound, but it sounds so, so fresh.

“The guitar is the motherboard of my songwriting,” he points out to CLASH over Zoom. We’re bringing it all back home, back to the store where he held his first guitar. “It was my first instrument. When I was turned on to music, the first instrument I wanted to play guitar… and my first guitar was a Fender, actually. After a couple of years of learning guitar I started writing songs. So, to this day, I start writing songs by picking up the guitar.”

—

—

The guitar remains the fulcrum of his artistry – live, he can scarcely be separated from it, and it remains in the bedrock of his songwriting.  “Obviously, it can start anywhere. A conversation can spur on a line, a beat can spur something on. It doesn’t have to be the guitar necessarily. But for most of it, it’s me and my guitar, in my room.”

Born and brought up in the United States, Jalen arrived on these shores as a tender student. Gaining entrance to LIPA – Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts – who took pride in walking the same streets as the Beatles. “It was a lovely time, and a fun time. Most of my memories that I cherish were outside of LIPA, actually. It was the people there that I met, who did stuff outside school – going to a gig, or a bar to listen to a record, going to someone’s house to jam – those relationships really sustained it. And I’ve got to thank LIPA for accepting me, I wouldn’t have met those people otherwise! It’s the overall experience.”

Right from the start, though, he stood out. While some peers cited Rage Against The Machine or Oasis as their inspiration, Jalen was listening to Sam Cooke, Smokey Robinson, and Nina Simone. “I’ve been obsessed with 60s soul, rock ‘n’ roll, pop, for a long time. Not just the 60s – that’s just the decade I listen to most. From 11 years old I would listen – exclusively – to music from the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. I mean, we all listen to other stuff – I don’t live under a rock, refusing to listen to what the world is giving me. But from the age of 11 I’d ask my mom I we could go to the mall and pick up some Supremes CDs.” 

“I was obsessed with the Motown sound, the Chicago soul sound, alongside the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors… the whole entire Ed Sullivan show, really! When I make music it reflects that. I don’t sit down with a drawing board and design an authentic, vintage sound – it just happens that way.”

—

—

Debut album ‘Come Around And Love’ reflects those instruments, but it feels totally natural. This isn’t a time capsule – it’s the document of his experiences, marked by each passing day. “Also, I’m signed to Daptone – and they love that music,” he points out. “Maybe if I hadn’t signed to them it would sound like something else. But when you strip it down, my songs aren’t all that different to other songs coming out right now – they all talk about love, sadness, the heat of the summertime.”

The timeless nature of truly gifted songwriting is something he aspires to. A great song can make an impact on lives in other decades, creating points of connection that transcend the barriers of time and place. “That’s the whole point,” he says. “You get great songs from any decade, any century. Look at the jazz standards from the 30s, and how they’ve lasted. I think the 60s just had certain technological advances, and people were hearing that for the first time. And there was so much change – from songwriting to instruments to Civil Rights and the Vietnam War. There was so much happening at once. And because of that those songs will be remembered for a long time, possibly for centuries – the same way we remember Beethoven and Mozart.”

Jalen Ngonda is part of a new wave of soul artists who are breaking out of their niche. The streaming numbers for groups like Thee Sacred Souls are astonishing, and Jalen is following suit – the new soul generation are going global, gaining a huge audience in the process. “It’s a combination of many things. I guess it came out on a label that’s popular – Daptone is a pretty looked-at label in the soul world. But it’s maybe a combination of me playing, social media, and it’s just exposure, really. It’s down to exposure. I’m one of millions of artists who are putting music out – it’s down to who you work with, your team. If everyone works hard at once then things happen. And my duty is to write the catchiest stuff possible. I always intend to write something catchy, and for people to relate to it. Lord knows why things happen… but I’m very grateful. And it inspires me to keep doing it.”

CLASH caught Jalen Ngonda’s KOKO set, and it was an inspiring evening of soulful communion. For the American-born star, the connection he gets from live performance means everything. “It’s a good feeling. I put my bag at the door, and it’s all about the music. It’s an hour and 15 of pure humanness. Everyone’s together, we’re all looking in one direction. We’re intertwined. It’s a good feeling to be onstage, sharing music. When you look out and catch someone’s eye, and they sigh to a lyric, it shows that we’re all human, we’re all together, experiencing the same thing.”

—

—

His story is still continuing. Take recent single ‘Here To Stay’ – already a staple of his live sets, and sought-after by DJs itching to play his music to soul clubs. “It’s three months old to the audience but it’s five years old to me,” he laughs. “I wrote it back in 2019 with my dear friend Adam Kay. It was the second song we wrote together. It began as a backing track – we wrote the instrumentation first. He’d pick up the bass, I’d play guitar… we’d get chord progressions together. We built the track up, and we experimented with different melodies. I wrote the lyrics like two days later – I’d been listening to a lot of Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells type stuff. It’s got this low rider, sweet soul feel. I had those sounds in mind, and that’s what came out.”

The guitar remains central to his method. Jalen recently entered a partnership with Fender – he’s a fan of the Stratocaster, in particular. “I mean, it’s a well-crafted guitar. To me, it’s the perfect guitar. It’s a solid body, durable… you could drop it down a flight of stairs and it might still work! They look great. It’s the same feeling as when you get a new car, y’know?”

Closing, he promises new material, and more live shows. “I’m currently working on the second album, in-between the shows. I’m writing as much as I can. I want to start tracking around the end of the year, so we can have it ready for you – and everyone – sometime next year.”

—

—

Stay in touch with Jalen Ngonda on Instagram.

Words: Robin Murray 
Photo Credit: Casie Liu

—