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Over the past three years, Jalen Ngonda has grown from cult favourite to bona fide soul torchbearer, taking his sound from intimate club stages to arenas and international festivals. Today he returns with the announcement of his second album, Doctrine Of Love, released June 5 via Daptone Records, alongside the unveiling of its electrifying title track. With Doctrine Of Love, he steps fully into his role as both a disciple and pioneer with the title track setting both the emotional tone and musical blueprint.
“I wrote that track when I was trying to do anything to get out of the studio,” Ngonda recalls with a laugh. “I was listening to a lot of James Brown at the time and that was an inspiration. ‘Doctrine’ to me was a word no-one ever uses. I took it to be like a certificate, the ‘Certificate of Love’ – look, I think maybe I meant ‘doctorate’, but we wrote it and recorded it and now it’s a whole thing. I just write the song. The listener can interpret it however they want.”
That playful blend of reverence and irreverence defines Ngonda’s artistry. A devoted vinyl digger whose grandmother gifted him “a shitload of Stax and Motown 45s” as a teenager, he remains steeped in the sound and spirit of classic soul. “I listen almost exclusively to music from the ’60s. The ’50s, the ’40s. Pretty much nothing past about 1972,” he says. On stage, dressed in sharp 1950s tailoring and moving with gentlemanly poise, he embodies the charisma of a golden-era leading man, a modern spirit questing for vintage authenticity, a Marvin Gaye for the Discogs generation.
An instant classic brimming with confidence and swagger, Doctrine Of Love distills everything that made his 2023 debut Come Around And Love Me such a breakthrough (now on 348 million+ streams), and pushes it further. His debut album leaned into the early 1970s glow of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, this new collection is set somewhere closer to 1968, rich with mid-’50s New Orleans R&B, girl group melodrama, folk-rock shimmer and the grit of Chicago and Detroit soul.
Born and raised in Maryland outside Washington D.C., Ngonda’s journey began at 11 when hearing The Temptations on the radio “blew my mind”. Self-taught on guitar, drums and keys, he cut his teeth playing drums in church before studying at LIPA (The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts). After busking across London and honing his craft, he signed to Daptone Records in 2022 – home to Thee Sacred Souls, The Womack Sisters, Lee Fields – and released his acclaimed debut album the following year.
Since then, Ngonda’s ascent has been relentless. From London’s 300-capacity Moth Club to the 5,000-plus Hammersmith Apollo, from early festival slots to commanding headline crowds at Glastonbury and We Out Here, he has proven that authentic soul still has the power to move modern audiences. Collaborations with Gorillaz and Jordan Rakei, and support slots alongside Thee Sacred Souls, Freddie Gibbs andOlivia Dean, have further cemented his reputation as one of contemporary music’s most compelling performers.
Doctrine Of Love is an album steeped in history but never trapped by it. Every drum break, string swell and falsetto run feels lovingly crafted yet utterly alive, the sound of an artist absorbing decades of influence and transforming it into something distinctly his own. A musical sponge soaking up rock and folk influences as much as soul, Ngonda remains a renaissance soul man at heart:
It’s no exaggeration to say that every day of my life I wish I would wake up in 1964 in Detroit recording with the Funk Brothers. But that’s not my life. So what I can do is express my thoughts and my fascination with that sound and period and just be an artist. The Doctrine Of Love holds that every thought and action should be guided first by compassion for others, because love is the highest measure of human worth.
Ngonda will take Doctrine Of Love on the road throughout 2026 with an extensive run of headline dates and major festival appearances across Australia, the UK and Europe. The tour begins in March and runs throughout the summer, including prestigious appearances at Love Supreme, NN North Sea Jazz Festival, Mad Cool, Mostly Jazz, Pori Jazz, Latitude, Øyafestivalen, Way Out West and more. The run culminates in a major UK headline stretch in the Autumn including Bristol, Bournemouth, Leeds, Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom, Manchester Academy and London’s O2 Academy Brixton, supported by Brooke Combe.
LISTEN TO ‘DOCTRINE OF LOVE’ NOW:
