Interview
Interview
Jalen Ngonda on the voices that inspire him most
Jalen Ngonda's faultless falsetto soars with old soul; with his UK tour underway, the singer delves into the voices that shaped him
Jalen Ngonda may be a burgeoning soul superstar with just two albums to his name, but his voice is timeless.
The immaculate, high-pitched croon that emanates from his syrupy larynx evokes a bygone era when Stax Records and Motown paved the way for soul music to penetrate the cultural landscape. After his most recent release, Doctrine Of Love, it’s entirely understandable that mainstream adoration has flooded his way.
Sumptuous soul records from yesteryear have guided Ngonda throughout his career. From when he started writing his own material in his native Maryland in the US, to when he relocated to Liverpool here in the UK, and more recently when he signed to Daptone Records – a no-brainer to anyone aware of the Brooklyn-based label’s output.
Even as he’s evolved as an artist, its the ’60s and ’70s that continue to set the bar. Likely why the misquote over why he never listens to music beyond 1972 continues to follow him around (much to Ngonda’s chagrin, he makes abundantly clear).
Speaking to him over Zoom, amid his current UK tour in support of Doctrine Of Love, Ngonda can’t quite put his finger on a reason the retro soul music sound resonated with him. “It’s just what I like,” he shrugs. “There’s no explanation for why I like it. I like the way those songs of the day were crafted, and I like the sounds of the instrumentation and the singing.”
Jalen Ngonda’s faultless falsetto soars with old soul. Ample reason to dig into the music vault then, as the ‘If You Don’t Want My Love’ singer delves into the voices that shaped him.
Eddie Kendricks
A falsetto that’s probably been the most inspirational in my early years was Eddie Kendricks of The Temptations. I first heard his voice when I was a kid, on ‘The Way You Do the Things You Do’ or ‘Just My Imagination’. He was in The Temptations, and he sang lead on those songs. That’s where I would have first heard him, listening to their songs in front of the TV. I was in my house. My dad came home with a CD and played it in the living room. I was just processing it at the time. I liked what I heard. I first thought it was a woman singing. When I first heard the song, I thought it was a woman singing the lead, but it was a dude. I’ve always loved the tone of his voice.
Was there anything specific that drew you towards that style of singing?
Falsetto is just one aspect of my singing. I also sing in baritone. For me, the falsetto just comes out of songwriting. It’s hard to explain why you sing the way you sing. It’s just how it’s expressed, because there are songs I’ve written that are in tenor to low baritone. As a singer with a growing range, I didn’t always sound really high when I was 20 or 22. It was strictly baritone. It was really through playing a lot of gigs, busking all the time and doing endless recording sessions that my vocal cords got stronger. It allowed me to go higher in ways that I couldn’t before. When I realised that my voice was getting stronger around 2018 or 2019, I started writing songs in that range because it was exciting that I was able to hit those notes.
Me singing falsetto is in no way a statement or anything like that. I think my producers kind of like that falsetto, so it’s like, ‘yeah, that’s the moneymaker.’ I don’t really think about the whole masculine thing. I’m singing high. All that’s just a bunch of bullshit to me. It’s contrary to what people think a singer should sound like based on their gender. It’s just music. There are male flute players, and the flute sounds very high.
Frankie Lymon
Frankie Lymon. It’s the same old story, really, just a different name. I liked what I heard! Not a specific song. Just a bunch of songs that he’s featured on with The Teenagers. His falsetto style is kind of the same across the board.
You mentioned your producers love your falsetto… Are you beholden to that sound?
Honestly, I don’t know. When we get in a room, we just write. I don’t think about my being an artist, and we don’t think about the whole Daptone sound. ‘What’s this song going to do to the sound?’ ‘What’s it going to do to me?’ You just write a song, and then we demo it. It just so happens that the music I’m into is also the music that Daptone does. If we’re in the room and they’re doing something I don’t like, I would just be honest and say, ‘It’s not working for me’. And I expect them to say the same thing. The goal is just to make a good song. We don’t think about anything around the song or the situation. We just think about the music first.
Russell Thompkins Jr.
Russell Thompkins Jr. from The Stylistics. He’s a really big inspiration.
I guess a lot of these records you would have listened to with your dad, right?
I got into soul music. The only thing my dad really did was bring home a Temptations CD. My dad’s very much into hip hop. He likes everything. He likes Michael Jackson and Prince. But I was listening to soul music on my own, man. They’d leave me to it. ‘Keep it down, I’m trying to watch the game. The Redskins are playing. Keep the music down.’ That’s how it really was going down. But I would listen to it with my dad, my mum and my brothers, because we all lived in this small house. If I was playing something, we would all hear it in the distance. People would come in and out of the kitchen, snapping their fingers and whatnot.
The Stylistics, I got into them around the same time, but a little bit later in my 20s. I started listening to them a bit more because I bought an album. I think it was ‘Betcha by Golly, Wow’ or ‘Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)’. I was listening to them a lot around the time I bought that album. That would have been when I was living in Liverpool.
What was your main mode of music discovery then?
When I was a teenager, the biggest would have probably been going into the record store, going to an aunt’s house, a cousin’s, an older aunt or uncle’s, or my grandmother’s house to dig through their old records. My aunt would give them to me. Well, I’d just take them. I mean, I’d ask her, like, ‘Can I have this?’ And she’d be like, ‘Yeah, go ahead. It’s been in the closet for 10, 15 years.’ I didn’t live far from her either, so if she wanted it back, all I had to do was take the bus and get it back to her.
Prince
I’ve known Prince my whole life. I was born in ’94 and my dad is a huge Prince fan. Listening to Prince is one of my earliest memories. I grew up on it. He definitely fed us a lot of Prince growing up. He’s always been a musical figure in my family, along with Michael Jackson. Prince was just someone I was born into knowing.
Prince is an artist who used falsetto in really interesting ways across a broad spectrum of music. Is that something that’s inspired you, and might inspire you with your own music to branch out and play with different sounds?
I do that all the time. It’s all down to what gets released. But as an artist, I’d be doing myself a disservice if I was just to stay with one sound forever. I think every artist probably wants to do something different with every project. So yeah, it is something that I think about all the time.
Are there any songs where that aspect of falsetto came naturally, or where you’ve had to fight to bring it to the point in the song that you wanted?
No. When it comes to writing a song, it’s whatever comes out first. If I sat with a guitar and was murmuring, it could be in baritone, it could be falsetto. I don’t think the vocal range really defines the song. What I said earlier was just, ‘Oh, I couldn’t sing like this before. Why don’t I try and do that on this song?’ But the song is the same to me, no matter what key it is in or who’s singing in what range. It’s all about the emotion that the singer gives out. I can’t really explain why ‘Come Around and Love Me’ is in falsetto. It just is. It was the first thing that came out, along with a lot of the other stuff that’s on Daptone.
Alex Turner
When I first got to Liverpool, I was still listening to ’60s soul and ’60s rock and roll. But I was listening to a lot of Arctic Monkeys. AM came out around the time I moved to Liverpool, and everyone was playing it. I really love Alex Turner’s voice, so was listening to him a lot. I liked the way he sang. I still like the way he sings.
Billie Holiday
![Billie Holiday - "Strange Fruit" Live 1959 [Reelin' In The Years Archives]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-DGY9HvChXk/0.jpg)
A lot of female singers have had more of an impact on my voice than tenors. Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick. Those voices, I think those singers have had a bigger impact on my singing than the male singers, really.
And your songwriting?
It’s just a mixture of a lot of things. The core of my songwriting, my roots have always been in ’60s R&B, soul, rock and roll, rock-pop, girl-group sounds, Phil Spector, The Beatles, all that stuff. That’s my input.
Jalen Ngonda is currently on tour throughout the UK. Find tickets here.
