Jalen Ngonda, an American artist based in London, mixes the sounds of Motown, classic soul, funk and R&B. In 2015 as a music student living in Liverpool, he first gained attention as the opening act for Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and the appearance helped earn him sets at the Newport Folk Festival and the Montreal Jazz Festival. Then in 2018, his first EP, “Talking About Mary,” came out. His next album, “Come Around and Love Me,” will be available this September.
Ngonda tells KCRW that as a kid, music never grabbed his attention — until he heard The Temptations. “When I heard that, it just became a fixation. I was like, ‘I want to hear this again.’”
Meanwhile, everyone else, including his parents, were into hip-hop and R&B. As a teenager, he started playing piano and listened to jazz giants like Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane.
Ngonda was born in Maryland and moved to Liverpool in 2014 to study at the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts. He admits that during the one-year program, which focused on piano and music theory, he spent more time joining bands than studying, which led to academic failure.
By the next year, he had run out of cash and couldn’t afford to fly back to the U.S. So he turned to small gigs. Then his manager alerted him to an offer to support Martha Reeves. Ngonda thought she’d think he was just another forgettable supporting act.
“I do have a vague memory of going in her dressing room just to be like, ‘I adore you.’ And she was like, ‘Was that you singing on that stage?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ She was like, ‘Oh man, you sang, you sang.’”
Sticking to his own sound
In 2017, Ngonda performed at the Newport Folk Festival and at the Montreal Jazz Festival. As an independent artist, he didn’t see the opportunities as a path to a record deal. Initially, he faced challenges.
“I was seeing labels like Sony and … Universal. And they just wanted me to sound like another … just piano and singing very contemporary, Adele kind of music. And I just told them, ‘That’s not really my bag. I like soul, and I like rock and roll. I want to do this.’”
Eventually, he found a label that fit his style — Daptone Records, known for 1960s-1970s soul/funk and recordings done on tape rather than digital.
“[Tape is] a very warm sound. And I love them. I've always been an admirer of them since I was a teenager. And it's like, ‘Well, I'll sign if that's happening.’ So when it came to making the album, it's another Daptone release that has that old sound. It just so happens to have me on it.”