Extra Golden is the second album of an American Kenyan collaboration. Two Kenyan musicians Otieno Jagwasi and Onyango Wuod Omari of the Nairobi, Kenya based benga band Orchestra Extra Solar Africa, and Ian Eagleson and Alex Minoff of the Washington D.C. based rock band Golden. So ultimately it’s the unlikely possibility of Kenyan Benga meeting western indie rock, and surprisingly it works really well as there is just enough of both ingredients to make the final result somehow incongrous but also enormously compelling. It’s the quartets egalatarian approach that makes this work so well, the directions feel almost endless, whilst the energy of these musicians is contagious. Benga is a jazzy guitar orientated style of popular dance music in Western Kenya that became popular in the late fifties though continues to this day. With a driving, at times throbbing bass line and clean clipped syncopated guitar, Extra Golden add a more Western influence, with occassional lyrics in English and the odd bit of riffing. Yet the truth is that this music exists outside both the African and western worlds, and as something of a bastard child is incredibly innovative and inspiring.
Bob Baker Fish
