THE ADULTS ARE BACK
Shihad frontman Jon Toogood's side project The Adults has taken a rather sharp right turn for their second album 'Haja'. Pairing some of New Zealand's top musicians with the traditional Sudanese music of Aghani Al-Banat has some rather astounding results. Jon Toogood told Radio BurgerFuel the story of how Haja came to be, crossing continents and genres.
Jon Toogood is known foremost as the hard rocking frontman from Shihad. The death of his father drove him to seek out new musical pastures and led to a side-project called The Adults, who released their self-titled debut album in 2011. The genesis of 'Haja', The Adults second LP can be traced back to a chance meeting at the Auckland Museum and has ended up spanning New Zealand, Australia and Sudan.
That chance encounter was with (now wife) Dana Salih, and and led to their wedding in Khartoum, Sudan. Three days into the ceremony, Jon found himself as the lone male whilst the bride performed the Sudanese bridal dance known as the Subhia in front of a few hundred of her female family and friends.
This dance was accompanied by all female musicians singing and playing drums. This "girls music" (a literal translation of Aghani Al-Banat) caught the attention of Toogood who later recorded some of the sounds on his phone and used this as the basis for the new pop/dance sound that's to the fore in the new release.
RADIO BURGERFUEL: So how different from the first Adults album is Haja?
JON TOOGOOD: It's so different from the first Adults album, in the fact that it’s roots are traditional Sudanese bridal dance music. The first Adults album was me just hopping in the car with a laptop and recording equipment and playing with my mates.
This time around, I started this on another continent with a form of music that I never even knew existed until I got married in Sudan to my beautiful wife Dana. That dictated the whole direction of the album. It’s basically an organic dance album, which is what they (Aghani Al-Banat) do. It’s pop and dance mixed with the music that I grew up with, which is punk and rock. Then it was thrown to people I love in New Zealand, from a different generation from the first Adults record. There's different styles of music as well, with people from hip hop like JessB and Raiza Biza, people from the R&B world like Aaradhna and Kings as well, and Indie Pop like Chelsea Jade. I just wanted to see what their take on this different music would be.
You’ve been studying at the same time right? How has this informed the music?
I’m doing a Masters of Fine Arts at Massey University based around what are the unifying themes between traditional Aghani Al-Banat and contemporary western pop and rock, which is my world. Where are the interconnects? Where are the bits that marry? Where are the bits that clash? Actually there’s more in common between us than different and that’s what I wanted to prove with this record as well.
Would you take this album on the road and do a show in Sudan?
My initial idea was to take a bunch of New Zealand musicians and go back to Khartoum to perform and rehearse with these Aghani Al-Banat musicians. This is something I floated with Gisma who was the leader of the group that I worked with. She was like “yeah we can do that, but not in Sudan". When you realise the way their government is set up, there’s lots of social taboos around mixing this female form of music with rock music or pop music. So she said “let’s do it in Dubai”. So maybe I could do it, but not at the moment, not in Khartoum apparently.
Have you got a favourite collaborator from The Adults recordings?
That’s a hard one. I’ve got to say, working with people that speak a totally different language, on another continent and having them be open to that. It was pretty amazing working with Gisma. But, standing in a room next to Aaradhna’s voice in Newtown, Wellington where I grew up and going ’oh my god, I’m standing next to someone who’s literally a genius!'. Then after doing an amazing vocal take, she turned around and went “was that alright?”. It’s so New Zealand!
Ladi6 on the first album as well. Taking a post-punk rock song and turning it into a pop song just by choosing the right notes and the right words. It’s pretty amazing being around that. Even getting the track back from Kings on this latest album. It was like ‘woah dude, you’re on some good drugs or something because you’ve just written this amazing pop song in two hours'.
The Adults new album Haja was released on 20/07/2018 via Warner Brothers New Zealand.
