J.S. Ondara: Knockin' on America's Door

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. 00:00:11 Speaker 2: Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right, enjoyed. 00:00:28 Speaker 1: Episode, Welcome to Broken Record. I'm Bruce Headlam. Some voices just grab you right away. That happened to me recently when I heard this voice on my car radio. There was something just so haunting about his voice, self assured, but oddly tentative, like he was still working out the meaning of the song while he was singing it. So of course we just had to have him Unbroken Record. It turns out, like a lot of kids, Jays and Dara became fascinated by American UZI by listening to faraway radio signals late at night. The difference was that he wasn't listening to those signals in Buffalo or Memphis or Duluth, Minnesota. He was in Nairobi, Kenya, listening to his parents' radio while they slept. That's when he decided his own American dream was to come here and become a singer. His first album Tales of America is full of great songs, wistful, cautionary, even violent songs about leaving home and finding oneself in a strange country, pursuing an unknown path. And like a lot of newcomers to the States, Jays and Dara can sometimes see things more clearly than we can, and he can express them in that beautiful, haunting voice. We sat down with him recently in an La studio and asked him to share his American dream with us. You want to start with a torch song? Okay? That is JS and Dara. We're sitting together in a studio in La. I think if I'm gonna set the scene, I have to mention your jacket, which is this tremendous red plaid jacket. Where did you get that? 00:02:23 Speaker 3: I believe it? God, this is in Boston. But I was drawn to it because this fabric is sort of similar to a fabric that a tribe in Kenya where's it's called the mass I tribe. And there are some fabrill that looks just like. 00:02:38 Speaker 1: This and it goes with red pants it which is a bonus. 00:02:42 Speaker 3: I am a big fan of red pants. 00:02:44 Speaker 1: Okay, well you wear them well, so tell me about that song. 00:02:49 Speaker 3: Torch song is the name of that. This is This is one of the songs that I'm still I'm still trying to figure out what the painting behind him is, behind behind the song is what those words mean? 00:03:06 Speaker 1: So tell me you how did it come about? 00:03:10 Speaker 3: Then? You know, Todd song was just words that I put down and uh and I put a melody on them, and you know, now it's a song, And I think, how how it happens to me is usually after these songs have existed for a while, then slowly their meanings gradually reveal themselves to the conscious mind, you know, like the things that were going in the background of my in the background on my head or writing it, they sort of revealed themselves. It turns out to be this. It's like a portrait that just sort of reveals itself as you put it, or maybe maybe one of those negative photo you put it in underwater and water is time and once it stays there within, you know, within the sort of scope of time, it reveals itself and you see the actual picture. 00:03:58 Speaker 1: You might actually be writing lyrics right now. 00:04:03 Speaker 3: They're just words really, And so I think some of the songs in the record I've sort of I'm gradually figuring them out by discussing them with people, and some of them, like torch Song in particular, it still puzzles me as to what those words are referring to. 00:04:22 Speaker 1: You were born in Kenya in Nairobi, right, yes, okay, and when was that? 00:04:31 Speaker 3: That would have been August of ninety two. 00:04:33 Speaker 1: Right, So what was growing up in Nairobi like then? 00:04:38 Speaker 3: It was? It was great. You know, I think when you're when you're a kid, you're just a kid, and that's just that, you know, you're very busy being a kid, that nothing else is really important, because I mean, it's too much time being a child. It's just it's all the time in the world, and it's it's it takes all the time in the world. And so you know, when I think about, you know, my childhood in retrospect, and I could see like, hmm, perhaps that might have been a difficult time. But then you know, when you're back at the time, it was just your child, and you know, and you're busy being a child and nothing else much other than your. 00:05:20 Speaker 1: What was your first memory of music? 00:05:23 Speaker 3: My family tells this story though when I was about seven years old, we always had this family gatherings every year where you know, you just everyone meets in one place, you know, just all relatives and you you meet this guy who was apparently your uncle, but you had no idea because you saw him at the store the other day, like, oh hey, I'm your uncle, boy. You were just selling me potatoes the other day. So so, you know, we had these all these gatherings and you know, everyone just comes together, and one of these gatherings is about seven years old. When we were there, my cousins had this terrible idea to give me alcohol. So they gave me, you know, I think, some little bit of alcohol, and apparently I got inebriated very quickly, as as you do when you're seven years old, and I just started, you know, singing out loud, just like a crazy person. And I was parently singing smells like teen spirit in just the wrong words. And you know those are some like the aardiest sort of you know slashes. 00:06:26 Speaker 1: You heard the song on the radio, yes, oh okay, so you're listening to radio by that point. 00:06:30 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just passively though, you know, you know it's there because we had this tiny little radio that the whole family had to share and sometimes I would just wake up in the middle of the night so I can steal some extra time. It's like three in the morning, everyone's asleep, sneak and then grub the radio and start listening for all the songs. So it turned from this passive thing to like, you know, I want it now and I'm sicking. I'm seeing it now. 00:06:55 Speaker 1: You your family didn't speak English at home. 00:06:57 Speaker 3: No, we we spoke. We spoke to Heley in the house. Is sort of those you know, it's what, it's what, it's what we did. 00:07:03 Speaker 1: So did you with smells like teen Spirit? Were you singing? Were you singing it in Swahili? 00:07:09 Speaker 3: I was, well, no, I wasn't singing any words. There was just gibberish things. 00:07:13 Speaker 1: It's just can you can you play a few bars of how you played it? Then? 00:07:17 Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if it's it's It might probably be embarrassing to to try and imitate my seven year old self trying to sing smells like teen Spirit with no words. It was just so like, who is it that he saidanger? 00:07:38 Speaker 1: Just nothing, by the way, that's how everybody's sang. 00:07:41 Speaker 3: It wasn't just absolutely gibberish. 00:07:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, so you started singing, and then you just kept singing after that, after the cousins spiked your drink. 00:07:51 Speaker 3: As far as singing, I started practicing my singing, I suppose in private, after you know, hearing. It happened in two phases. So I heard I had the music of Jeff Buckley's just quite accidentally as a kid, and I had how. 00:08:07 Speaker 1: Did that come with that? 00:08:09 Speaker 3: So with the sort of advent of CDs, when that became a thing, we had all these people, I suppose you to call it pirating, who would go on the Internet and they would just get anything, any music or film or whatever. They would just download anything that was coming out of the US UK and then they would sell them on the streets. So I discovered just a crazy amount of music that way that would never be on the radio. But you know, for some reason, this pirating experts just dug them out somewhere and they were just lying about. And so I was already on this trajectory where you know, I was drawn to this music. So when I figured this out, I would just go there all the time and would you know, play me this, And then I you know, I found I found some Buckley songs that way, and at that point, I was like, whoa, what's it? What is it doing with this voice? This is amazing? So I tried, you know, start locking myself in the room and try to practice that. 00:09:12 Speaker 1: And you know, do you remember which songs of his you practice? 00:09:16 Speaker 3: It was Forget Her Forget Yeah, that was that was the song I heard, and I was like, well, this is great, And I think that sort of began what was, you know, me trying to be a singer at all in private? And then I think the second phase of that, I was listening to Radiohead and how told muses this sort of high for such a voice and that, you know, and being like, well, how do you what's that? How do you why would you do that with your voice? And how do you even do that? And so, you know, get locked myself in the room and also try to go up there, which you know, I still try to do that every once in a while, you know, just I did. I don't know if I do it well enough, but I think I'm still sort of I feel every time I'm singing, I feel I'm transported back to that moment when I'm a child, and I'm still just trying to trying to figure out how to sing. 00:10:10 Speaker 1: Because is that a good feeling. 00:10:12 Speaker 3: It's it's nerve racking. It's probably not a good feeling. It's still a nerve wracking just because it's this is singing. It was not something that was open about and it was not something that you know, was encouraged growing up in me. So it's something I'm still not confident, you know, like I don't I don't feel like a confidence singer really. 00:10:36 Speaker 1: Now, you did tell a funny story once about the song Knocking on Heaven's Door. Could you tell us. 00:10:41 Speaker 3: That, Yeah, you know it was this one, this one, I remember it quite well. We just left the school and were standing outside the school and you know, there's there's all this people who are selling all this foods out there, and I'm having this talk, you know, fight, pay, debate whatever you want to call the friend about, you know, about rock and you know, growing up listening to all this rock songs, I feel something of an X spot. 00:11:06 Speaker 1: What were the bands you were listening to then? 00:11:08 Speaker 3: Well, you know Nevana a radio had said that, Kiri, Oasis, you know, just all that stuff that was coming out of late late nineties. Out of two thousands, but yeah, Guns of Roses and all that, and so so we have this discussion about not can happens o guns and Roses, you know, the famous guns and Roses song. So we're talking about this and like, yeah, there's guns of Rosas song can have his doing it goes well and actually that that song was by this other guy He's called Bob Dylan. And I'm thinking, well, no, you're wrong, it's I know this. I I've been listening for what, I know what I'm doing. So we go into this in his fight, and then we ended up making a bet, you know, for a hundred can you show things just you know, there's a bunch of money for me, but then not too much money here in American currency. But we lost that bad. I lost that bad because I ended up finding out that it was actually by this cynical Bob Dylan. And that's sort of how I found Dylan's music and found folk music that way, and just fell into this sort of Rabbi hole that I feel like I'm still digging myself deeper into every day and I can't see how I'll get out now. 00:12:33 Speaker 1: At this point, you still didn't You didn't play guitar at this point or any instment, right, but you were still writing songs. 00:12:39 Speaker 3: I was writing songs. 00:12:40 Speaker 1: I was writing words, you know, rewriting melodies with them. 00:12:43 Speaker 3: Sometimes sometimes, but I never, you know, thought much of those melodies. You know, I wasn't confident in them, but I wrote words. And I think one of the reasons why I dove pretty deep into you know, that sort of focused rabbit hole and Dylan is because when I discuss with Dylan's music and then I was, you know, reading his songs, and I'm thinking, well, well, these are these these are just stories, their poems with melodies. Maybe maybe I can just do this with all these words I've I've been writing since I was the child, and perhaps I can. I can put some melody on them, and maybe we'll call them folks, So maybe I can have some kind of career. 00:13:22 Speaker 1: We'll have more with js Andra after this break. We're back with js and Dora. Can you play Saying Goodbye for us? 00:13:35 Speaker 3: Yes? 00:13:38 Speaker 1: So your next step in your musical development was far from Kenya. It was Minneapolis, right, Tell me how you ended up there? 00:13:47 Speaker 3: Well. As soon as I found Dylan's music and folk music in general, it was a time when I think I really needed that as well. I was just a bit you know, was in haschool's been lost a bit add just you know, being being drawn to this thing that just consistently dissuaded by everyone. You know, well, you love something so much, but it's probably a taboo for you to to love it. That being music just you know, it's just it was just not something that was part part of the culture. 00:14:20 Speaker 1: Really, what was your family's ambition for you. 00:14:24 Speaker 3: Uh, you know, medicine, law just you know, that was that was that was just how it had to be. 00:14:32 Speaker 1: And so with either of your parents lawyers or doctors, not. 00:14:35 Speaker 3: Really you know, I think it's it's sort of just something that's sort of ingrained by the culture there and how they grew up, when they grew up and all of that. But so that left me in is a place where you know, this thing I wanted I couldn't even talk about. 00:14:53 Speaker 1: You were playing guitar by this point, I was not. 00:14:56 Speaker 3: I was not. This is just a stupid dream of as a kid. And so the first thing I did was applied to the University of Minnesota because I figured I wanted to go to Minnesota because of my you know, first nation with dealing at the time. So I applied the University of Minnesota, didn't go well. Tried applying for you know, work opportunities in Minnesota. Is trying to find ways to come to the States because you know, it's quite difficult to move here, and you know, I just try this for years and nothing really ever worked until one time at Green Courd Entry application the lottery green kind thing that was a relative that applied for me and a couple of other people and went through. 00:15:43 Speaker 1: Nobody told you about the weather in Minnesota before you. 00:15:45 Speaker 3: Left, not really. No one can tell you that in a way that you can conceptualize, right, So you know, they'll tell you it's cold, but then you're like, oh cool, so because you know cold, I mean I felt cold before. It's fine. But you know, whatever, whatever you know transpires in Minnesota, there should be a different word for that. That's not cold. This is not cold. It's just the worst thing you can think of on the other side of cold. 00:16:15 Speaker 1: Did you arrive in the winter, right right. 00:16:17 Speaker 3: In the heart of winter? Yeah, I was, you know, like mid February as you know, that one winter where people were just saying, oh, this is one of the worst winters we've ever had. Yeah, So yeah, got there right in the middle of winter in February and just had this crazy, crazy body shock. 00:16:42 Speaker 1: When did you finally pick up a guitar. 00:16:46 Speaker 3: It was a bit after I landed, so you know, I moved there and I had this vision that I think I'm going to form a band and I'm going to take it on the road. And I've seen things online they do this now. I've seen some videos and the interwebs, you know, going around with bands and playing songs and good old America. So yeah, I'm moving in. This is what I'm trying to do. It is, you know, telephone with band, because I can't play anything at this time. I just have all these words and a couple of melodies for them. I'm thinking, maybe, you know, a band, can uh sort of put some flesh around it and we can go play it out. And then I quickly realized that I have I don't know any person who who's in music or who can uh form a band with me. So I said, okay, that's a short set back. Let me see if I can pick up the guitar and just accompany myself, you know, because if I don't know anyone, what else are you going to do? 00:17:46 Speaker 1: Do you remember the first songs you learned. 00:17:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, I was knocking Heaven's door. 00:17:51 Speaker 1: Oh okay, obviously because because guns and roses. 00:17:54 Speaker 3: Because guns and roses, right, so I can Heaven's door part of I believe, and also is blowing in the wind. Yeah, And I sort of just learned a few songs and you know, got some grasp of some chords and then just took my words and try to put some melody around them. I didn't dive deep into it, and so I still just try to to this day. Just full around and see where I can find a sound. You just fool around with chords and just whatever, see what the melody. Yeah, just go where the finger goes and see what happens. 00:18:30 Speaker 1: Well, you make it sound all very accidental, but you're very resourceful. You couldn't find a band, so you picked up a guitar, You learned the chords you needed, So you must have been very driven in some ways. 00:18:39 Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I think I was. Yeah, just you know, what else are you going to do? You you made this huge move. You're you know, very far away from home. There is nothing to do then to move forward. 00:18:50 Speaker 1: When did you start playing in front of people? 00:18:54 Speaker 3: Probably maybe three four years ago. So, I mean I learned. I was very as soon as I figured out a few chords, I was like, okay, good, I've got this figured out. 00:19:07 Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Do you remember the first time you got up and did it? 00:19:12 Speaker 2: Man? 00:19:12 Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I think so. 00:19:17 Speaker 1: What was it like? 00:19:21 Speaker 3: Oh gosh, just the most bizarre experience in the world. Well, you know, you ever do something and you're think, what are you doing? You fool? 00:19:33 Speaker 1: Oh man, you were hearing your parents' voice at that point. 00:19:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, that exactly. That just echoing in my head, and I think sometimes I still do. You know, in the middle of a show, just playing torch song or something, and you know, you hear this voice in the bocahet what are you doing? What are you doing? 00:19:53 Speaker 1: Are you your family now? Are they happier your success and your selling records and people love your is Does that made a difference to them? 00:20:02 Speaker 3: Well? I think it has. It has in a way that you know, perhaps they they understand that this is something that you know, I'm passionate about, but this the sort of the roots of this problem are so deep, so ingrained in upbringing and in culture that yeah, I think they still don't they still don't understand what it is that I do. 00:20:25 Speaker 1: Can we hear another song? Can we hear a good question? 00:20:28 Speaker 3: Yeah? 00:20:28 Speaker 1: Sure, More music and conversation with JS and Dora after this break, we're back with more songs and conversation with JS and Dora. You talked a lot about Kenya and the limitations you felt there. Your first album is called Tales of America, right, So first of all, why that title? What what made you call that? 00:21:02 Speaker 3: You know, when I was I was a kid and I was discovering this music, you know, and I was drawn in a way too to America and to the West in general. And I think part of the reason why, you know, I developed this attachment to these songs is because it was just it was like a spaceship for me. Just you know, I turned on these songs and they took me to just a completely different universe, you know, where people spoke a different language, everything was different, it looked different, and it was just it was a spaceship for me, and it was a magical thing. And you know, when I was, when I was a kid and I was writing little tales on a book, I imagined that, you know, one day I might be in America and maybe I'll make maybe I'll make a an album and I'm gonna call it Tells of America. But then this is it's just it was just a stupid thing. You think as a child, the same the same way you think about going to Mars or flying a plane or you know, you know, just or you know, talking to an imaginary friend. You know, as a boy, you dream. It's what you do as a boy. You dream about traveling to to the moon, and you drive imaginary airplanes around, and then you think about making a record Tells of America. 00:22:32 Speaker 1: You've now been in the States for how long it's come close to six years, now, six years? And you had this dream as a kid. How how is it for you now here? What's it? What's it like past the dream you had as a kid. What's the reality for you? 00:22:47 Speaker 3: It's I think that's part of what I'm sort of processing in this in this record Tells of America. You know, I'm trying to what's that, what's that what's that area? What's that divide between the dream and the reality, Because perhaps I'm not I'm not a kid anymore, you know, maybe i am, but I'm not that little child. In Kenyon. Now I'm here now, and so that does something to you, and trying to grapple with what that dream, the idea you have of America when you're somewhere different. Oh, it's America. This is the American dream, this is this is how that goes America? Is this sudden? Is this particular place with this this particular ideals? Because you know, America has this sort of reputation all across the world. You know, it's you know, because I think of America as this place that's supposed to be, at least in our times now, supposed to be sort of spearheading the mission of civilization across the you know, the human species or something like that. So all over the world people are talking about American and all that. And so that dream, that idea of America and what the reality of it is once you set foot in America and you see, oh, well, I guess the work lives ahead. 00:24:14 Speaker 1: So if you could go back and tell your nine year old self that had that dream of America, what would you tell that What would you tell that boy? Right now? 00:24:25 Speaker 3: So the world is a mysterious place. Keep your shoes on and buy multiple hats. 00:24:33 Speaker 1: You do have great hats. I have to say thank you. A Broken Record is produced by Justin Richmond and Jason Gambrel, with help from Mel LaBelle, Jacob Smith, Julia Barton, and Jacob Weisberg. Special thanks to my co hosts Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell. Broken Record is produced by Pushkin Industries. I'm Bruce Heaven