Jalen Ngonda is bringing the music of love, from Maryland to Streatham

As culture shocks go, they were pretty seismic. When rising US soul sensation Jalen Ngonda first left his Maryland home to study music in Liverpool in 2014, he flew via Dublin, where he required a 24-hour stopover. “I’d never seen vast amounts of Irish people, going from, like, a black and Latino neighbourhood in Maryland to seeing just white people. That’s a shock but in a very inviting way,” the 32-year-old explains. “I just felt so enamoured. I was, like, ‘Oh man, I’m in a different part of the world. I’m out of America.’”

But it was a journey that would change Ngonda’s life. A spell at the Paul McCartney-established Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) kick-started a career that has seen Ngonda pick up a record deal, headline at the 5,000-capacity Hammersmith Apollo, play Glastonbury twice and collaborate with Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz. Ngonda’s modern take on the classic soul of Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and Jackie Wilson has also attracted famous fans, from the Modfather to the Doggfather: Paul Weller and Snoop Dogg are admirers, as are Elton John and Olivia Dean.

The reason for his vertiginous rise is clear. Ngonda is no Motown pastiche artist. His exquisitely performed and produced music brims with swagger, authenticity and grace — the uninitiated should listen to his 2024 single Illusions. It’s music for the head, heart and feet, as is his sublime second album Doctrine of Love, just released. Tracks like Good Good Love and Burning Temptation showcase his expressive, raspy falsetto to great effect.

Ngonda has — in a literal, geographic sense — never looked back from his three-stage hop over the Atlantic 12 years ago: he has remained in the UK ever since, settling in south London’s very own Streatham. “It just made no sense to go back to America. If I went back, I would move back to my parents’ house and, you know, it just would have been a start over [again] point,” he says.

Doctrine of Love deals exclusively with matters of the heart. Love and heartbreak are covered in equal measure. For all the good good love he sings about, there are songs like Love is Gone. I ask Ngonda if the tracks are based on recent lived experience. If so, he’s had a busy few years in the romance department. “It just comes out of my imagination. It’s just creating stories,” he says, although “some songs” are from personal experience. The album’s title track is a stand-out. Ngonda is a professor of love who “gives doctorates out to people who have experienced love” (Ngonda confused “doctrine” for “doctorate” when writing the song, letting the mistake remain). It’s a joyous, funny track. So is Ngonda loved up now? “I’m in a relationship right now. But that’s as far as I’ll go,” he says coyly.

Ngonda was born in the town of Wheaton, near Washington DC, in 1994. He can pinpoint the exact lightning bolt moment when he discovered soul music. It was the late 1990s and he was watching a TV biopic about The Temptations. “I was just transfixed and so focused on that sound and that look. It just really turned things on for me,” he says. His father bought a CD of 1960s hits and “that’s what started the whole obsession”. Later, aged around 13, Ngonda co-wrote his first song, Hey Lady Lifeguard, with his neighbour when they both had a crush on the lifeguard at their local community swimming pool. The tune eludes Ngonda today although his neighbour did record it on his Nokia phone (deep in a drawer in Maryland could lurk a lost classic). Around this time Ngonda’s mother caught him singing You Keep Me Hangin’ On by The Supremes in his bedroom. It was clear where his passion lay. He mastered numerous instruments.

It was a second TV show, some years later, that turned passion into practical reality. Ngonda and his father were watching a documentary about New York’s “Fame” talent school. LIPA was mentioned, as was the fact that it hosted 1960s nights. “I was, like, ‘Oh, this place looks fun. They do a 1960s night at this music university in England?’” Ngonda sent LIPA a link to his Soundcloud account. They replied, complimenting his “very well-crafted” music and encouraging him to apply. “That was the first time any higher education [institution] ever did anything like that. So I just went with it,” he says. A remote audition in California became the offer of a place, which became that flight to Dublin. His local church arranged a benefit concert to fund the air fare.

In Liverpool, Ngonda played drums, guitars or keyboards in bands. He discovered pub culture and his flatmates introduced him to Peep Show. “Yeah, I love Peep Show,” he exclaims about the British TV comedy following two mismatched-yet-co-dependent buddies. I tell him that I was once an extra in Peep Show and show him a photo. I’m there in the background of a scene behind Robert Webb’s Jeremy character. “Oh my goodness!” says Ngonda. “Yeah, I got introduced to that really early.” Britain — and British humour — clearly suited him.

He did 18 months at LIPA before leaving to “pursue my own thing” and in 2022 signed to Daptone Records, an independent American label. He describes memories of the past decade — his rise to success — as “like looking at old pictures”. We talk about songwriting. Many of Ngonda’s musical heroes became more lyrically strident as their careers progressed. Marvin Gaye addressed environmental decay on 1971’s What’s Going On, while Curtis Mayfield got political on albums such as 1975’s There’s No Place Like America Today. Can Ngonda see himself following a similar path? “I don’t want to write something political for the sake of it,” he says thoughtfully. However, he’s well aware “how crazy times are right now” and doesn’t rule anything out. “If I’m inspired to write something, I’ll write it.”

He’s clear on one thing. Being an American living in London doesn’t provide a cushion from the political craziness back home. “It’s like when if a nuclear bomb dropped, if you’re within the inner zone, that’s the worst bit. But that will spread out. I think right now, living in Europe or living anywhere apart from the States, we’re feeling the radiation from Trump.”

Despite classic soul’s influence on his music, Ngonda doesn’t like being pigeonholed. His range of musical heroes includes Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson and Jim Morrison. Nor, he says, does he feel at odds with the modern age, musically-speaking. He listens to current music as well as to New Wave, hip-hop and Nirvana. However, “nine times out of 10” when he has his earbuds in, he’ll be listening — and this will surprise no one — “to some stuff from the 1960s”.

Talking about that era, Ngonda almost had an encounter with the 1960s’ most famous son. McCartney came to LIPA to deliver a lecture. During a Q&A, the young American wanted to ask Macca if the pre-fame Beatles ever went to Chicago when they were signed to blues and R&B label Vee-Jay Records in their early years. But Ngonda “chickened out”. I tell him it sounds like the kind of niche question that McCartney would love. “Maybe I’ll meet him someday outside all of this and then I’ll ask him that question,” says Liverpool’s — and now London’s — more recent surrogate musical son.