Few musicians have Richard Bona’s command of his instrument. Mixing his Cameroonian roots with Afrobeat, funk, jazz, reggae, soul and Latin music, Bona is a whirlwind of talent and ideas. His fingerstyle grooves combine with perfect staccato lines and his solos mix harmony, timing and speed. And he can match every note he plays with his voice, sometimes hitting a perfect harmony line for good measure. What’s more, he can do all this on guitar, keyboards and drums as well.
It’s small wonder that Bona’s reputation is growing fast: playing to bigger and bigger crowds at music festivals worldwide and enjoying a record deal with the world’s biggest jazz label, Verve, he’s at the top of his game. Born and raised in Cameroon, Bona was a natural musician from a young age, brought up surrounded by music. After becoming a professional guitarist in his teens, it was due to an opportunity to gain a residency at a hotel that he first considered taking up bass. Thanks to the hotel owner’s insistence that he and his band play jazz, he was forced to teach himself and his fellow musicians how to play it, assisted by a collection of 400 jazz LPs in the hotel office.
As fate would have it, the very first album he pulled out was Jaco Pastorius’ eponymous solo debut LP. At first Bona assumed that Jaco couldn’t possibly be playing a bass, or that the instrument had been recorded at the wrong speed. However, once he had understood the music and assimilated Jaco’s sound into his own style, the rest was history.
Bona’s move to Paris in his mid-20s was also fateful, as he was contacted by jazz legend Joe Zawinul, Jaco’s sometime bandmate, who tracked him down after hearing his playing on a drummer’s demo tape. Although he put the phone down on Zawinul (fearing that a prank was being played!), Bona was asked to join Joe’s band, which was about to embark on a world tour. With endorsement from such a senior figure, Bona soon found himself working with a who’s-who of modern jazz and world music, touring and recording with Mike Stern, Cecil Taylor, Bobby McFerrin, George Benson and Chick Corea, as well as playing in the Pat Metheny Group and recording sessions with John Legend.
Bona has also released four solo albums since 1999, revealing him as a well-rounded composer and songwriter. His panoramic approach to music leads to a modern African spin on funk, jazz, Latin and classical, as well as streetwise beats and grooves. In London to headline a sold-out night at the London Jazz Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bona was in relaxed and talkative mood before the gig.
Not only have you done quite a lot of music relating to Jaco – the two excellent Word Of Mouth Big Band albums of late, but you also seem to have an affinity with his ‘vibe’, that magical thing that made him such an individual. Where does that come from?
But that’s how I learned to play the bass, that’s how I came to jazz music through listening to Jaco, I’d never played jazz before. And then I heard Jaco, that’s my jazz music right there! [Laughs] From there I discovered Charlie Parker because I heard ‘Donna Lee’, that was the starting point for me. When you follow those footsteps and when you look at those great musicians they always introduce you to something different. If Duke Ellington was here today he wouldn’t play the same music, or if Miles Davis was here you’d be surprised at what he’d be playing now. Before John Coltrane died he was already working on his ‘Egyptian’ suite! So I’m out there trying to follow those footsteps and I love doing it.
You are a multi-instrumentalist but the bass seems to essentially represent your personality – it’s you.
That’s definitely me. More than if I play guitar for the same amount of time.
| Bass has such a great role in music…
Oh definitely, I love to play guitar and I love to sing but when I play guitar, I always miss the bass. I’m more in balance with the bass, much more than playing any other instrument. I love guitar and I love writing with the guitar because I can see everything in front of me. I usually just write on the guitar, keyboard or piano but the bass brings me more of that balance when I’m playing.
Did you always sing and play bass from day one?
First of all the conception of being a musician where I am from is that you are not just an instrumentalist; you are a musician because you can sing and you can play, and you can dance. So you are a storyteller. You are not an instrumentalist as categorised in Western culture such as a pianist, violinist, or drummer. But where I grew up you needed the whole package, you can’t just be a musician without singing. But it’s about culture; rock and roll musicians in the 60s had that same culture also. When you look in the 60s and 70s at all those rock bands everyone used to sing, the whole band. Look at Latin bands all the performers sing, and they all play drums as well. The conception of a musician back in the day was that people sang and played, you were not just an instrumentalist. So when I started to play bass I just started to sing naturally because that’s what I used to do when I played balafon [A pentatonic xylophone originating in West Africa] I played balafon for many years singing at the same time, so when I did the transition to go and play organ in church I kept singing because I couldn’t play any instrument without singing. I did that from organ to guitar, same transition, and I kept singing.
How old were you when you started all this?
I started when I was three, and I didn’t pick up a bass until I was seventeen but I was already a professional musician – I was already a working and travelling musician but then I picked up the bass late. I wish I could pick up another instrument but I’m old now!
The connection between your voice and your bass is very strong now where you can sing every note you play and even sing a perfect harmony from the note as well.
You have to keep stretching. I’ve developed my own sound now. I came to a place where I have developed my own sound, which is what I have been looking for all these years. But you keep searching for the best because there’s always something out there, and it’s almost like something you will never find, though I’m sure if you find then…that’s it. We are in search of something that we can’t even touch – that’s what makes the music so beautiful. Why am I still practicing? I’ve got enough speed or enough technique to last for two lifetimes. So why am I out there every night in my hotel room thinking, ‘Oh shit, I’ve only got one hour left before the gig, let’s practice then I can sleep a little bit.’ Why? Because there’s always that little thing that keeps us going.
When you first came to the attention of the likes of Joe Zawinul and Mike Stern you moved from Cameroon to Paris and then New York and began playing with a lot of very schooled musicians – yet you’re self-taught – how do you think your approach helped you stand out from the crowd?
You don’t learn how to play music in school, I always remember when I was a kid and I would bring some of my friends to rehearsal because they wanted to join the band in church. My grandfather used to lead the thing and he would just sit these kids down and say, “Can you do this? Can you sing this and that? If you can’t sing it in the first take – you are out!” I got mad at him once because I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t let my other friends join the band? He told me, “It’s because they’re not musicians - because you don’t learn how to play music.” I grew up with another kid, who I met when he came to Cameroon when the war broke out in Liberia. Every morning I saw him with a tennis ball, he was always there practicing, always kicking, he didn’t have any money so he just used this little tennis ball. Guess what? He became George Weah and he became the best soccer player of Europe and was voted World’s Best Player. It’s about passion. School will help you if it’s your passion,
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| but if it’s not your passion then you’re wasting your time my friend, because you’ll never get it. Great musicians that I know who went to Berklee College of Music like Branford Marsalis, or Pat Metheny they sounded the same way before they stepped into that school – they already sounded like that.
Let’s talk about your basses - I see you have a new fretless, where is that from?
It’s from New York Bass Boutique by a guy called David Segal - it’s unbelievable – it’s a beautiful bass, he builds great basses, he’s completely unknown, the design is amazing.
I’ve heard that you don’t use the circuit in your Fodera and just use it passive – is that right?
No, it’s a passive bass. No circuit. I don’t play with active electronics because I grew up playing Fender, so as a musician I never got to the point where I could cross over to using an active bass. I always feel that the active bass takes a lot out of my hands because I make up the sound with my fingers and so the active, pre-amplifies all of the bass. I hate barely touching the bass and all of a sudden it’s responding. I love to control the tone, and I control my tone better when I play a passive bass; but I understand for some music and for some people who slap a lot, they love something that pops out more. But for me I’m more of a finger style guy so a passive bass works better for me.
This is interesting because I’ve seen you play live a few times and obviously when you are touring you can’t always guarantee what amp you’ll be able to use each night – except when I’ve heard you play, you always get the same sound. Is this because you generate the sound from your fingers first?
Exactly, the sound is in the fingers. With the active sound you’ve got to be careful actually, because it takes a lot out of your sound when you play fingerstyle, so I basically have the same sound. When you take any good bass player who plays passive, in any situation, it will basically sound the same. If you took Jaco playing any kind of passive bass, you would always have that sound. But sometimes with those active basses they can take a lot out of your sound, because I cannot really ‘pump’ because I love to really push and I love to play light, but I can’t do that without the passive bass. If I want to play a ballad lightly, with a soft touch, the active bass is still loud. And I love to hear the sound of the wood. I love to hear the sound of the bass, I don’t want to hear the sound of the amp or a pre-amp, I want to hear the sound of the bass itself, because the wood has its own sound. Sometimes when I test a bass I test it without even plugging it in. I play the bass just to hear the tone of the instrument itself. You could choose a bass without even plugging it in.
You visited one of Victor Wooten’s Bass Nature Camp as a guest player – do you think that’s a good thing that he’s doing there?
It’s a very good thing; it’s a very, very good thing. You can see that Victor also came from playing that same way, that guy never went to college to study music, Victor used to play in Pampers! He and his family weren’t just playing music they were doing all kinds of circus tricks and stuff as well. But when you go to the camp and you see how he teaches these kids, he teaches them how to set traps, teaches them how to track the coyotes… he teaches them about life. Music is just like life – life is so perfect. Everything is like, regulation of this line in nature. The science of mathematics doesn’t even come close, because music is so rational. C major is C major, but you move one finger and it’s not C major anymore, it has changed. With maths you can divide 10 by 3 and you will find an exact number because it’s an imperfect science – but music is perfect, music is like nature, nature is perfect.
Mike Flynn |
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Artist Interviews 
