Legendary Cameroonian musician and Jazz bassist Richard Bona is considered by many to be the finest player in the world. Billboard magazine even went even further to suggest that Bona is “the hottest electric bass player since Jaco Pastorius – and the first since that past master with the potential for solo stardom”, while Newsweek asked its readers to “imagine an artist with Jaco Pastorious's virtuosity, George Benson's vocal fluidity, Joao Gilberto's sense of song and harmony, all mixed up with African culture." High praise indeed.
But then when you’re born to a family of musicians, inspiration is never far away, even if the proper tools are. As a child growing up in a mud-hut village in the heart of Cameroon, Bona didn’t always have the money to buy the instruments he needed, so a little improv went a long way - one home-made guitar was even fashioned with cords strung over an old motorcycle petrol tank.
At 13 Bona assembled his first Jazz ensemble, and discovering Jaco Pastorius shortly after would move him to switch allegiance to the electric bass. Stints in Germany and France would see him rise to prominence playing in a string of Jazz clubs with such luminaries as Manu Dibango, Didier Lockwood and Salif Keita.
In ’95 Bona relocated to New York, where he lives and works to this day. Just three years later he would become Musical Director on Harry Belafonte’s European tour. High profile gigs have seen Bona work with many of the city’s finest, including Larry Coryell, Michael and Randy Brecker, Mike Stern and Steve Gadd. And as if to come full circle, Bona has featured prominently on many Jaco Pastorious’ Big Band albums and toured extensively with the Pat Metheny Group.
When he’s not playing bass you’ll find Bona in his guise as professorship of music at New York University or producing his own compositions – “If Richard Bona could create the soundtrack to his dreams”, waxed the Los Angeles Times, “it would sound a lot like his latest self-produced, Grammy-nominated album, Tiki.”
BONA:“In Cameroon music has to be describing a story,” . “When I was a kid, music was not music to us unless there was a beautiful story behind it. That’s my background. That’s still where I live. Even when people don’t understand the language, they can feel what’s happening. The sounds of the words and the music tell the story. And the stories of people’s lives are the same, work and love and struggle and happiness, all over the world.”
