Band Biographies: Dakar

DAKAR is the capital of Senegal. Dakar is a rally race. Dakar is also an American rock band from Duval County, Florida: named after the street in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Jacksonville where it was founded by David Benfield, Darrell Edmunds, and Luke Jean in 2019.

Benfield and Edmunds initially based their songwriting in the style of 90s guitar-driven alternative hard rock with 2020’s Come and Get It EP and evolved from there, incorporating indie, punk, modern, and southern with an unabashed penchant for pro-democracy, anti-fascist, pro-diversity, and anti-racist themes.

In 2021, Dakar followed up with their EP Over the Line, leading off with a raucous dystopian cautionary title track blending overdriven classic rock guitars with an anti-police state theme reflecting the sentiment of the previous year’s political strife in the U.S.

After a few attempts with a fourth member, the band recruited bassist Alejandro Soto and recorded their debut full-length, Say It Again, at Friends of Friends studio in Jax with engineer Brok Mendes. The band was unanimous in their account of the nine-month production process as arduous, but gratifying.

Of all the meanings of Dakar, the boys prefer the name derived from the Senegalese local Wolof word meaning “whoever settles here will be in peace”.