Liner Notes: Extra Golden
YOU KNOW A KENYAN is your good friend if you get a shout-out in a song.
D.C. resident, Weird War member and guitarist/singer Alex Minoff gets many, many shout-outs in Extra Golden, the band he formed with fellow guitarist/singer Ian Eagleson and several musicians from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and the place where benga music was born.
Extra Golden combines the punch of rock 'n' roll and the dancing, syncopated melodies and rhythms of benga, which grew out of Kenyan folk music and southern African pop. The group's first album, 2006's "Ok-Oyot System" (Thrill Jockey), was built on the talents of singer/guitarist Otieno Jagwasi, but he died of liver complications.
For the new "Hera Ma Nono" (Thrill Jockey), Eagleson and Minoff recruited veteran benga singer/guitarist Opiyo Bilongo to accompany drummer Onyango Wuod Omari, but the transition is seamless: The eight songs on "Hera Ma Nono" still bubble with the soulful grooves that made "Ok-Oyot System" such a joy.
While benga underscores everything in Extra Golden, Eagleson and Minoff incorporate their love of American R&B into songs such as "Night Runners" and "Street Parade," while "I Miss You" adds slide guitar to make an East African country-rock ballad.
As for the shout-outs, the soul-steeped "Jakolando" is a tribute to Jagwasi, sung by his brother, Oniego Jagwasi, while "Obama" gives praise to the Illinois senator and presidential hopeful whose office helped Extra Golden's Kenyan members get visas so the band could reconvene in the U.S. and make "Hera Ma Nono." Obama's mom and wife get their names called in the song — and so does Minoff, natch.
Express spoke with Minoff for a new feature called Liner Notes, where artists comment, track-by-track, on their recordings. (Click here for an earlier profile this writer did on Extra Golden that goes in-depth about how the band came together.)
You can listen to the tracks on Extra Golden's Web Site while reading Minoff's commentary on them.
"Jakolando"
That song is a tribute to our co-founder, Otienno Jagwasi, and it's sung by his brother, Oniego Jagwasi. That's the only song he sings on the album; he wasn't actually in the U.S. when we made the album [in rural northeastern Pennsylvania]. We sent the track over to him in Nairobi, and he went to a studio in Nairobi and recorded some vocals on it. We really had the idea to have that song for him to sing, because we wanted him to become part of the group, so we thought it would be a good idea to get him on the album.
The first part of that song is cool because it's got a really basic chord progression — it really [underscores] the similarities between rock 'n' roll and something like benga. ... The piano player [David Egan] is a Louisiana guy, and he's been playing for a long time. He's written songs for people like Irma Thomas and Joe Cocker and people like that, so that [R&B sound] is definitely his style.
Structurally, the first half of that song is like classic old benga music: It's got the vocal line with a really stripped-down groove; usually it's just bass and drums. Then when the vocal line ends, the guitar picks it up; then we put a chorus over the melody.
Like a lot of the songs, that was really first time we ever played it. I was very impressed with the way Onyango Omari was able to handle that.
It was nice [to have good drum kit for Onyango]. Even for me, when they got here and we started playing the songs off the first album, they really took on a whole new life with a real drum set. On ["Ok-Oyot System," which was recorded in Nairobi] with the drum set that he had, [the songs] had a certain personality. But when he plays the exact same thing on a real drum set, you realize how dancey the songs were, in a way I didn't even necessarily realize before.
"Obama"
We suggested to Bilango that he should compose a song thanking Obama and everybody for helping us get together last year. When they arrived last September, he basically had that song already composed. There was a minor tweak here or there, but the general song was pretty much completed by the time they were here.
[Alex gets a shout-out] I get that on a lot of the songs, actually. It's pretty normal to just shout-out the guys playing in the band.
[Extra Golden hasn't heard from Barack Obama yet about the song] No, but the woman in the office, Jenna Pilat, came to one of our shows when we were in Chicago, so we got to meet her. And we performed that song when we went on tour, so she got to hear her name on stage, so she was really happy about that.
It's a pretty normal-sounding African song. A lot of people have mentioned that if they didn't know that Ian and I were playing on it, they wouldn't necessarily think it's not just some African song. It's got a little bit of a Lingala feel [aka soukous].
Musically, the last part of the song, we took it out of that feel so it had kind of a unique character. When we [suggested] that to Bilongo, he was like, "Well, how about this riff?" And he played the ending riff and we were like, "Yes, that's the riff." [laughs] He kind of, like, sweats riffs. He just constantly writes songs really easily — and they generally tend to be really good.
"I Miss You"
That's another one of [Bilongo's] compositions. [He's pictured at left] There's a second half to that song, but the second half was another, probably, 10 minutes or something. So we cut the second half for the album just so we could get more songs on the album. Plus, I think we really liked the idea — that's easily the shortest song we've released. And it worked on its own, just that section of the song, without the second half. The pace is picked up [in the second half] and it becomes much more grooving and danceable and upbeat.
Lyrically, that song — it's funny. Most people who hear our music don't understand Luo language. But you can understand him saying, "I miss you." And there are parts where he's almost imitating a woman, where he's saying [in light, soft voice] "I miss you, honey." If you don't know the language, it sounds like — and musically — it just sounds like "I'm gone and I really miss you." But it's a little bit darker than that. He's really imitating a woman saying, "I miss you," but he thinks that she's lying and that she's really with another man.
"Night Runners"
Musically, the first half has a lot of little elements thrown in there. It's got more of a New Orleans groove — almost like a Meters-type of groove in the first half of the song. In the second half it goes into more of a benga beat but with much more of a minor-chord progression. There are elements of almost, like, a ZZ Top vamp. It's a weird combination.
Lyrically, it's about Jajuok. They are these nocturnal creatures — they call them Night Runners — of the Luo folklore. Those guys just told us about the Jajuok, and we thought they were really interesting characters, so we proposed writing a song about it. They thought that was a little bit strange, so Bilongo composed lyrics about being an outsider hearing about the Jajuok and how strange the Jajuok sounded to someone not familiar with them. It seemed like odd subject matter to them, but they're also into messing with the formula because they're playing with us.
"Street Parade"
That's our New Orleans tribute. Musically, it's got the piano on it again — that New Orleans-style piano. Lyrically, it's a tribute to New Orleans, but it's also — it's interesting, especially around the second verse, it's almost like a back-and-forth between someone saying, "You've got to get out of here. This place is about to be totally destroyed." But then also looking from the perspective of the person who is there and saying, "This is my home. It's really hard to leave that. This is my life."
At the same time, there's a line in there that the New Orleans resident says: "The water never leaves; it's always here. It never leaves. We'll build more Superdomes." Like, we can take this; it's happened before. That attitude, like, "It's no big deal; this happens all the time. If the Superdome gets destroyed, we'll build anther Superdome. We'll build a new New Orleans."
Then it says, "Reggie Bush."
That's sort of an interesting idea there because New Orleans was destroyed and the whole situation was [messed] up. And last year the Saints football team was an inspirational story. They were always terrible, and then they had a great year last year. They got the first pick in the draft — they got Reggie Bush — everyone was really excited. Which was great, but I think when a lot of people saw that they were, like, "Oh, yeah, this is awesome! This is totally inspirational! They got Reggie Bush — their problems are solved!"
When really they're not. They're far from it.
The Saints started off 0-4 this year. So, it's like, "Yeah, they had that [good football] year, but the refrigerators are still in the trees."
"Brothers Gone Away"
Otieno [pictured above] is in the lyrics, but it's about struggles and tough times with family members and friends passing away. Musically, that's a cavacha rhythm, which is a somewhat common rhythm used in East Africa. It's a little bit of a weird rhythm, but otherwise, musically, it's not really that much of a benga-style tune. There's probably a little more West African [music] in there, but it's a hodge-podge, like most of our stuff.
"Love Hijackers"
That's another Bilongo composition. That's the closest to straight up benga on the album — in fact, basically, it's just straight-up benga. And lyrically, that's another relationship-oriented song talking about people who use wealth to attract love or take away someone else's love. Or people who are attracted to wealth instead of real love and how those people are misled and misguided.
"Hera Ma Nono"
The last song was the composition of our drummer, and he's singing the lead vocal on that. It's another relationship song about, basically, having your significant other leaving you for someone who is full of money — kind of a recurring theme.
Musically, it's interesting. [Onyango] composed the song, and he was telling us how to do the chords. And we played the chords to the song and he said, "That's not what I want." But we really liked it, so it was a little bit different from what he really wanted. The way he wanted would have sounded like normal benga music. ... But we convinced him to keep it that way because we thought it was genuinely inspired.
Group photos by Paul Mawson (rock) and Noel Kupersmith (bridge); Opiyo Bilongo in Nairobi and Otieno Jagwasi in Kenya photos courtesy Thrill Jockey/Extra Golden
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