Extra Golden

One of the spectacular bands at this year’s 10KLF is Extra Golden, a unique merging of two musical traditions.

Initial members were Ian Eagleson (guitar) and Alex Minoff (guitar) both from the Washington DC rock band Golden and Otieno Jagwasi and Onyango Wuod Omari of the Kenya benga band Orchestra Extra Solar Africa.
“We’d been playing in Golden for about ten years,” Alex Minoff said in a phone interview. “I think the last time we played was somewhere around 2002. But Ian and I continued to write songs together anyway, even if we didn’t have Golden necessarily as a outlet.”

Since 1995, Ian Eagleson had been traveling to Africa to document African music for his Ph.D. When Eagleson got a visa to study there for a full year in 2004, Minoff decided to visit him when his other band, Weird War, ended their tour in the UK.

“Part of the idea was that we were just going to work on more songs together,” Minoff said. “Then Extra Golden just kind of ended up happening out of that.”

As Eagleson and Minoff began to work with Jagwasi and Omari, combining benga music with American rock, they discovered that they had created something quite extraordinary.

But when Jagwasi died in 2005, the band wondered if it would survive since Jagwasi had been the heart of the collaboration. It was then that the band was asked to perform at the 2006 Chicago World Music Festival.

They brought in Opiyo Bilongo who had been with a group called Bilongo Golden Stars, for which Eagleson had helped record two previous albums in 2004. They released their debut album, “Ok-Oyot System,” which bore Jagwasi’s signature touch, in time for this special festival.

Still, there were problems with visa approval for Bilongo and Omari. They had to enlist Sen. Barack Obama’s help to clear the roadblocks and issue the visas just a few hours before they boarded the plane taking them out of Africa.

Not only did the band, now dubbed officially, Extra Golden, play the World Music Festival, but they booked rock clubs and private gatherings of Kenyan people.

One generous supporter offered up his home in the Poconos in Pennsylvania to record their next album. They spent five days in this private house with an assortment of amplifiers, effects pedals, and a drumkit that was in pristine condition, something that Omari greatly appreciated since his was in a terrible state of disrepair. The result was “Hera Ma Nono,” which also bears a special thank you song to Barack Obama (and his wife and mother, which is the benga way to extend gratitude).

That album and their current US tour features vocals in English and in benga and the signature three guitars, bass, and drums. For the album, these extra instrument tracks were overdubbed.

For the live shows, they have asked Onyango Jagwasi, brother of Otieno Jagwasi, to join them as a special vocalist, and Noel Coopersmith, a bass player from Chicago.

Extra Golden: Barn Stage, 10KLF; Wed., July 23, 9:30 p.m.