Trekking to Africa for a bit of extra musical flavor has long been one of the more dubious traditions in Western pop, with the results too often no better than hauling back some exotic souvenir or ornament. Extra Golden, however, is no opportunistic in-and-out cultural exchange. The group is in a lot of ways an extension of Golden member Ian Eagleson's Ph.D. research in Kenya, where he studied that country's benga music. There he hooked up with Kenyans Otieno Jagwasi and Onyango Wuod Omari and invited fellow D.C. Golden member Alex Minoff along for the ride. The results, captured on Extra Golden's debut Ok-Oyot System, sounded like a bona fide collaboration.
Alas, Otieno Jagwasi passed away before the album's release, but that only redoubled Extra Golden's efforts to keep the music alive. And it did take some effort, too. U.S. tour plans were almost scuttled before Barack Obama's office intervened and helped get the group members visas (Obama and his people have since helped other African acts get to the States as well.) That hurdle crossed, Eagleson, Minoff, Omari, and Jagwasi's replacement Opiyo Bilongo (plus a few more friends) convened in Pennsylvania to make a new album.
Ok-Oyot System, released in 2005, was recorded quickly in a rundown Nairobi nightclub. For Extra Golden's second album Hera Ma Nono (the name translates to "Love in Vain"), the group had the same porta-studio but just short of a full week, plus all the usual studio tools. Predictably, things are a touch slicker, but only a touch. Thankfully, the disc retains the down-to-earth vibe of its predecessor despite the dual luxuries of time and better equipment. Even better, the communal environment clearly heightened the collaboration. Unlike Ok-Oyot System, Hera Ma Nono credits all songs to the band, as opposed to individual band members, and no doubt the results sound more cohesive as well.
The album starts with "Jakolando", sung by Onyango Jagwasi in tribute to his late brother, the gently funky pulse switching gears around the four-minute mark to something a little more elegiac. But Jagwasi's "Jakolando" vocals, recorded back in Kenya, are pretty much just a cameo. The band handles the rest of the singing, taking turns on lead but all chipping in at one point or another.
"Obama" is a jovial dance number (thanking the U.S. senator for his help) that gives way to a dramatic fuzz-guitar solo denouement. "I Miss You" is like a Nairobi country ballad, while "Night Runners" (sung partly in English) initially recalls the polyrhythmic swing of the Meters before shifting to a more buoyant groove driven by interlocking guitars.
"Street Parade" is the first track on the album to feature lead vocals from Eagleson, and, along with "Brothers Gone Away" (and as with his most direct contributions on Ok-Oyot System, like "It's Not Easy"), it recalls 1970s singer-songwriter rock in the mold of rootsy globetrotter Ry Cooder. That's hardly a bad thing but perhaps not the best reference in this context.
Fortunately the 11-minute "Love Hijackers", sung by Bilongo, and the title track, sung by Omari, end the album on a more African note. Not that the album, and Extra Golden as a whole, don't go a long way toward making distinctions between "African" and "American" irrelevant, but it's Nairobi that courses through Hera Ma Nono far more prominently than, say, Washington, D.C. In fact, the closer the disc threatens to come to home, the more you hope it gravitates back to Kenya, clearly its spiritual and musical home. In an ideal world, other similarly inclined acts with their eyes and ears toward Africa will follow Eagleson's and Extra Golden's lead back to the source.
