#jsondara

I was excited about this show since the minute I heard J.S. Ondara was scheduled to play in Baltimore. His voice is full of emotions that range from longing to overwhelming desire. His songs are about relationships and coming to America from Nairobi, Kenya to realize a long-shot of a dream.

The following background story is a summary of a February 2019 interview on npr music’s World Cafe. While in Nairobi, J. would frequent the local internet cafe and watch music videos for hours. He was enamored with Bob Dylan while in high school, to the point of being obsessed. He admits to “falling into a rabbit hole of folk music”. Although he had been writing poems, lyrics and songs for a few years, there was no acoustic guitar in his family’s home. J. asked his mother to buy him one. Her response was, “Do you want to eat dinner for a month, or do you want a guitar?”

J. left his family and friends after obtaining a Green Card in a lottery and relocated to Minnesota in the middle of winter. The influence of Bob Dylan was behind him choosing that locale, even though the climate was nothing like he had ever experienced.

He did purchase a guitar in order to accompany himself during gigs. J. opened for high profile musicians such as Lindsay Buckingham. As his audience grew, he got signed to the Verve Forecast label to release a debut collection of songs called Tales of America. Well-known indie musicians Andrew Bird, Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, and Sebastian Steinberg contribute their talent as J.’s backing band. It’s expensive to take a band on tour, so J. is touring solo, at least for his first headlining dates.

Baltimore’s venerable and intimate club, The 8x10, was the perfect place to see J.S. Ondara on a warm summer night. The singer-songwriter told engaging stories in between songs and genuinely enjoyed hearing audience comments. He was wearing a beautiful vintage suit and fedora, which added to the uniqueness of the evening. J. played almost all of the songs from Tales of America. He asked the audience to sing the chorus of Saying Goodbye with him and was impressed with the enthusiastic response.

After a brief break, J. came out to take photos with fans and sign merch. It was a wonderful evening of music from a young man who had the guts to follow his dream to a new country with an unlimited future ahead of him.

With a euphonious tale and a black-and-white cover to boot, one would think J.S. Ondara stepped out of the 1960s.

The Kenyan-born Ondara may be 27, but his lyrics far transcend his generation and, indeed, the twenty-first century.

His lilting melody effuses images of Chicago nightclubs during its blues explosion or an open door somewhere in Greenwich Village. Ondara sings of the contradiction of the American dream with a knowledge so pronounced that he may as well have attended a Vietnam protest first-hand.

Released by Verve Records in 2019, his debut album “Tales of America” examines the present climate of the United States through the eyes of one who left for Minnesota to follow a dream.

Each song is beautifully written and saturated in evocative imagery, with two back-to-back melodies particularly standing out: “Torch Song” and “Saying Good in Goodbye”.

In one, Ondara says his heart is “never on time, always a little behind.” In the other, he sings “there goes my innocence.”

Yet, it’s “Somebody call the doctor, from the university / Somebody call upon the witch and the wizardry / Somebody call the rabbi, the pastor and the sheik ‘cause we are coming on the days of insanity” from aptly-titled “Days of Insanity” that displays Ondara’s full writing talents and the unifying theme of the album.

Likewise, “They call her Delilah / the Queen of Deceit / they call her the girl from the magazine” soon follows in the next song, “Television Girl”. In Christian history, Delilah is infamously known for betraying Samson by cutting off his strength-giving hair.

“In the water, in the fire, I’ll go wherever you go / in the valley, in the canyons, I’ll go wherever you go” he sings in “Lebanon”.

In ending ballad “God Bless America”, he speaks for those who are unable to speak for themselves: “Will you let me in, or are you at capacity / will you set me free, are you holding onto history / Will you be sincere, are you averse to honesty / Will you dare to hear those children marching on the street”.

The record is a compilation of poem after poem, culminating in a sound that is entirely his. It’s accompanied by a wonderful array of traditional folk instruments to back him.

And their main man grew up in a family unable to afford musical instruments of their own.

The album is also a tantalizing narration redolent of Bob Dylan.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that Ondara counts Dylan as one of his greatest inspirations. He confessed to Rolling Stone in February 2019 that he first learnt of Dylan following a losing bet with a friend.

According to the interview conducted by Erik Tanner, it was Ondara’s insistence in favorite band Guns N’ Roses fathering “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” that led him to discover the real artist behind the song: Bob Dylan.

He became infatuated, both with Dylan and American folk music. After achieving his green card, Ondara moved to Hibbing, Minn., simply because it was Dylan’s hometown.

“‘I had been thinking I’ll move to this place and I’ll form a band, and then I’ll take it on the road. But then I get to Minnesota, and it hits me very quickly that I don’t know anyone. Getting to America was impossible, but the path ahead of me, once I got there, felt even more impossible,’” he told Tanner.

Ondara’s passion began as “the weird guy listening to a bunch of rock songs” in a Nairobi Internet café, though his notebooks were full of lyrics and poems long before he stepped into the locale. His budding career, however, started during open mic nights in Minneapolis.

Ondara and Dylan share similar themes and style, particularly to Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” (as opposed to Ondara’s “gone with the wind,”) the lull of “Girl from the North Country” compared to Ondara’s “Television Girl” and, perhaps coincidentally, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” (The album seems a response to this ballad especially.) But Ondara’s voice is, of course, very different from Dylan’s heavy American accent.

He was discovered on YouTube by DJ Andrea Swensson, was courted by various labels and then began working on an album in a Los Angeles studio.

The result lays behind a record sleeve depicting a Romanesque painting.

Ondara concluded an autumn tour in the United Kingdom, France and Australia, mere months before the January 2020 announcement of a second (sophomore) album in the works!