Extra Golden

No phrase has taken a bigger beating in the court of public opinion than “world music.” At best, the phrase conjures up images of music school graduates who have dedicated their lives to being little photocopiers, loyally recreating the sounds of foreign musicians but adding nothing of their own save musicianship. At worst, these two words evoke memories of douche-bags with sitars crapping out piles of new age drek for the most self-satisfied post-hippies and the lamest of NPR listeners. So please — for the love of all that’s holy — don’t call Extra Golden “world music.”
    Extra Golden is the brainchild of Ian Eagleson and Alex Minoff, two American musicians best known for dishing out angular fractured rock music with acts like the Makeup, Golden, and Weird War. But in recent years, they found themselves drawn the sounds of Benga music, a Kenyan genre that doesn’t differ so much from American popular music. The two decided to engage in a bi-continental collaboration with Otieno Jagwasi, a well known Benga artist, and the result was the critically acclaimed album Ok-Oyot System.
    The album generated considerable buzz among a certain subset of American listeners, but it appeared the band would be short-lived. In the time since Ok-Oyot System was recorded, Jagwasi had succumbed to AIDS. But Extra Golden continued undaunted, recruiting well-known Kenyan singer-guitarist Opiyo Bilongo for a follow-up, and retaining Onyango Wuod Omari whose jaw-dropping drumming was central to their sound. The result is their incredible new album, Hera Ma Nono. Synthesis.net met up with Eagleson and Minoff to discuss the band, Benga music, and Paul Simon.

World music is obviously a loaded word for American music fans. Why do you think that is?
Alex Minoff: A lot of things that are marketed as world music aren’t very good. In the ‘80s the idea of “world music” began and labels were searching for international artists; like after Nirvana, everyone wanted a band with flannel shirts.
Ian Eagleson: We’re not trying to make something marketable in a “world music” category. We’re just trying to see what happens when we put our ideas together. We’re not trying to cut something from there and fit it into a different style like sampling something and making it into a dance track.

So what would you say makes you different from your average “world music” act?
AM: Frankly, we’re just better. I don’t mean to condemn everyone who’s ever done it before. But it’s true. Second, we’re not trying to take a Kenyan artist in our studio with our musicians and producer and shape them. We both come from a place of really revering and knowing [Benga] and being inspired by it and learning to play it on our own. Then when this presented itself it just worked because when we went there we didn’t have ideas like we’re going to make a record and make a killing. We just said we’re going to work on some songs like we’ve been doing for 15 years.



The idea of American musicians collaborating with African musicians to create some amalgamation of the two inevitably brings up comparisons to Paul Simon’s Graceland. Do you welcome those comparisons?
IE: Graceland gets a lot of flack mostly because of the way Paul Simon went about it. He just sort of parachuted in there and got the hottest musicians he could find and was off. But that album, in some ways, is kind of similar to ours. A style like Benga has a lot in common with rock ‘n’ roll. They came up at the same time and developed from the same worldwide music media thing in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s not too much of a stretch for Paul Simon to collaborate with those guys. They’re inspired by a lot of the same things people over here were.

What is it about Benga music that struck the two of you?
AM: The first time I consciously heard Benga was around 1998. Benga was not my first exposure to African music, and I was obsessed with some other styles when it came around. It didn’t immediately knock my socks off. Then Ian started spending a lot of time in Nairobi, and I heard it and liked it. Ever since then, I discovered this enormous catalog of Kenyan guitar music and after listening ad nauseum I hear the music in a way I didn’t hear it at first. Benga is something that would be really easier for an uninformed listener to just hear and discard. It doesn’t have the sort of exocticism that usually appears to westerners looking for world music, like Lebanese or Malian…Benga is 1-4-5 major chords. That’s it. There’s no vocal semitones. It’s just really really simple. Benga is like country music. It’s roots are in Congolese Rhumba, but the guy who started Benga really come from out in the middle of nowhere to the city to make some cash. That doesn’t sound so different from the story of your average American rock band.
IE: We were working with musicians our age who had been through the same struggles as us, though it’s a lot more difficult over there. You’re in a band and you’re trying to write good songs and play shows. That commonality made it a great thing to do, because we had similar experiences. We thought about the idea of actually going to Africa and trying to play there, and when I spent a year doing research, everything just fell into place because I had the connections and the recording equipment. We didn’t know how it was going to turn out because I’d never done anything like that before. Working with Otieno on the first record, I could tell we would be able to meet on a middle ground with our styles and that’s what made it possible. Benga is based on a lot of the same principles as older rock ‘n’ roll with the chords and structures and stuff. There some songs that to me don’t sound avant garde in any way, but the mix of people with different approaches trying to meet on common sound is unique.

What was the process of recording like? I know your first record was recorded pretty much on the fly in a nightclub in Africa.
IE: The biggest difference was that we actually practiced together this time. This time was very rewarding and fun because we got to play and perform as a band and record the songs together more than the first time. The first has a certain quality we couldn’t duplicate because of the circumstances and Otieno’s voice. But this one was great because the idea of playing together again seemed like it just couldn’t happen.
AM: When we made the first record it just sort of happened, and we finished everything in Nairobi. I left and came back to DC and went in and mixed everything except for one song whch needed vocals. Ian finished that in Nairobi and sent it to me through some friends traveling abroad. Then it just sat for a year. Ian was in Kenya another six month and I was here doing things. Then a year later he died and then literally five days later Ian was here and we mixed the album and finished it and looked for a label. We didn’t really have the idea that this was a thing. This time we practiced and did shows…we were a band and we were very comfortable. We got a house and a studio and took our time and recorded twenty songs. It ended up being very similar to the first album, and it was very quick—four or five songs a day. Here’s my song, here’s the chords, let’s track it. After that was done, we’d listen and clean things up, maybe redo some of the tracks. But we’d been playing together so long it was really wasn’t a big deal.

What do you think Extra Golden offers American listeners?
AM: Everyone should like this band. I really feel like Extra Golden is something that anyone could like. I’ve played in bands where that wouldn’t be a true statement, and I knew that. I feel like it has a very positive vibe to it, and it’s something new that’s instantly recognizable. It’s not oblique and weird. It’s just a matter of if they ever get a chance to hear it. There are a lot of people who might not like this music but those people I don’t care about. The music I’ve been around since I’ve been playing has been—especially a long time ago—there’s this idea like you have to try and trick the audience to fuck with them. Do something weird and then this thing that’s really nice, and then destroy it. I don’t want to fuck with the audience anymore. Benga is beautiful, simple music.

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