Jalen Ngonda

Jalen Ngonda honours soul music's rich history while pushing it forward into new territory, an artist who’s both archivist and explorer, a disciple of the greats actively shaping the future of music. Having spent the last three years growing this new soul vision from small clubs to arenas and festivals across the world Ngonda stands poised to become the new spokesman of authentic soul with the release of his second album Doctrine Of Love. Doctrine Of Love is an instant classic of an album, a long player alive with a confidence and swagger that seals the young singer’s reputation as not only the spiritual heir of soul’s great leading men but a one-off songwriting talent stepping far out from the shadows of his artistic ancestors. The title track ‘Doctrine Of Love’ sets both the emotional tone and musical template for the rest of the album, “I wrote that track when I was trying to do anything to get out of the studio” remembers Ngonda. “I was listening to a lot of James Brown at the time and that was an inspiration - Doctrine to me was a word no-one ever uses, I took it to be like a certificate, the ‘Certificate of Love’ - look, I think maybe I meant ‘doctorate’, but we wrote it and recorded it and now it's a whole thing.” The Doctrine of Love is multi-faceted of course - yes, it can be a cool word that fits the song, it can be a code, a philosophy, words to live by, words to love by, words to write some classic music by. ““I just write the song,” Ngonda enthuses, “the listener can interpret it however they want.”