A Pine Bluff-born and raised musician has played a role on vocalist Durand Bernarr’s “Bloom” album that won a Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album.
Frank Moka is a songwriter, producer and drummer who contributed to Bernarr’s self-released album. Moka, 41, posted about the win Sunday afternoon during the Premiere Ceremony of the 68th annual Grammy Awards at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The main ceremony was televised that evening from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
“(A)nd just like that … I’m a (G)rammy winner!” Moka exclaimed on Facebook.
Accepting the Grammy with his parents following up on stage, Bernarr exclaimed: “Happy Black History Month for the rest of my life!”
In a phone interview shortly afterward, Moka said he’d been working with Durand since 2016 while working as a drummer for Erykah Badu, with whom Moka still tours when he’s not headlining his own band under the pseudonym “Dos Negros”.
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“When he started to blow up, he brought me along with him,” Moka said of Durand. “He sang a song called Mango Butter (released in 2022), and it blew up,” Moka said. “He hasn’t let me off tour with him.”
Durand, Moka said, is a “natural born therapist” who in some way humanizes every situation and makes people free to be vulnerable and not be judged.
“He knows what the industry did to Little Richard, and he took it personal,” Moka said. “He never got his props due. Little Richard is literally the founder of Rock and Roll. He never got credit for it. He never won any awards. He was the most progressive of the time.”
“You’ve got people like Durand who are carrying the torch with a more progressive thought, and just demanding and commanding respect.”
Moka has been working in mainstream music for a decade now, but it was a grind to get there, by his own testimony.
His father Frank Moka Sr. is from Nigeria and worked in corrections facilities, while his mother Florence Moka worked various jobs. The family moved “left and right” across Pine Bluff, the younger Moka said, and he kept busy as a drummer in bands at Southeast Middle, Jack Robey Junior High and Pine Bluff High schools.
“I grew up, and I got to give a shout out the Pine Bluff High School art program,” Moka said. “It’s very extensive. That’s where I got into more of a competitive role.”
Moka graduated from Dollarway High in 2003 after his family moved into the former district by his senior year.
Struggling to find opportunity in Pine Bluff, Moka journeyed down to New Orleans in late 2005, not long after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Crescent City, and worked at Bennigan’s restaurant.
“I thought after marching band in high school, it was over,” Moka said of playing music. “I was always a songwriter and producer. I never knew I could be a drummer professionally. I was basically in New Orleans trying to make a little more money than I could.”
Moka and his best friend, Greg Ragland, moved back to Pine Bluff after about a year and stayed for only three hours, by Moka’s account. Seeing that his hometown had endured a population and economic decline while fighting violent crime, Moka said he and Ragland “figured it was a good idea to continue on to Dallas,” another journey of five to six hours.
“I get to Dallas, and I’m pretty clueless about anything musical,” Moka said. “I have my laptop, and I get my ideas out. It’s therapeutic for me.”
Moka ran into some people in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, people who exposed him to things he said he hadn’t seen before, and discovered a band called RC and the Gritz.
“At the time, I met my teacher, Saunk Rasa,” Moka said. “He introduced me to South African drum and dance. I started playing West African percussion. They figured I should bring that talent out to develop, and I should go see RC and the Gritz.
Little did Moka know, this is Badu’s backup band.
“The position for percussionist comes up, and I’m in the right place at the right time,” Moka said. “I got close to Erykah and started writing with her and touring with her, about 2015.”
And the rest is history.
Moka earned a personal nomination in this year’s Grammys, as one of eight songwriters on Bernarr’s “Overqualified”, part of the “Bloom” album, for Best R&B Song. The writers for Kehlani won that category for “Folded.”
Two other musicians with Southeast Arkansas were connected to Grammy-nominated works this year. Bobby Rush, who spent part of his early career in Pine Bluff and occasionally performs and volunteers in the city, was nominated with Kenny Wayne Shepherd for “Young Fashioned Ways” as Best Traditional Blues Album (Buddy Guy won for “Ain’t Done with the Blues”). And Kevin Bryson, director of jazz studies at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, played the bass trombone on “Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores” by the Kenny Wheeler Legacy featuring The Royal Academy of Music Jazz Orchestra and Frost Jazz Orchestra (Christian McBride Big Band won for “Without Further Ado, Vol. 1”).
For Moka, this was his first time to be nominated for the world’s top music award, but not his first time to be around Grammy-worthy talent.
“I’ve been involved in Grammy-nominated projects with so many different projects,” he said. “This is the first time I’m trophy-worthy, if you would.”
The Recording Academy establishes policies for how a songwriter or background musician may be nominated for a Grammy. Although Bernarr was the sole nominee for “Bloom”, Moka said he contributed to more than 50% of the album both as a drummer and songwriter.
He’s staying in Los Angeles to perform with his band at Gold Diggers, a hotel, bar and recording studio, to promote his album, “Kangol with the Dashiki”, under the Furndware label. The album, he said, speaks to his father’s African music influence and mother’s American music influence.
For the father of three – 12- and 16-year-old girls and 13-year-old boy, it’s another product of a long grind from Pine Bluff to New Orleans to Dallas.
“Knowing what you want to do is half the battle,” Moka said. “As soon as you know what you want to do, there are no more excuses on why you are not great.”