RICHARD BONA - Gwen Ansell - Business Day 17/7/2013 RICHARD Bona has a unique bass-guitar voice. He shares with many African-born jazz players the project of narrative musician ship: his song lyrics tell stories and even his instrumentals have the quality of a journey through landscape or emotions. That’s part of the continental tradition, and in Cameroon-born Bona’s case, part of the family tradition too: his grandfather was a "griot" (a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and/or musician). That storytelling quality comes across stronger than ever on his most recent release, Bonafied (Universal). What sets Bona apart, though, are the idiomatic features his bass playing inherited from Cameroon (the country’s intensely percussive bikutsi music) and from his first instrument. At four, he began playing the balafon: a large West African marimba. Although he hand-crafted many other instruments for himself after that, it was not until he was 17 that he settled on guitar. "At the time, in West Africa, the guitar was the instrument in fashion; there was no salvation without it," he told one interviewer. Other musicians in Cameroon had long been experimenting with ways of importing the balafon sound onto modern instruments. Many of those experiments involved physical adjustments to guitars: Yaounde pioneer Martin Messi me Nkonda linked his guitar strings together with paper to make the strings sound as though they were being struck. Bona’s approach, however, is one of composition and technique: he builds the colours of balafon into his sound, and the runs and intervals reminiscent of a hammered instrument into the tunes, and into his fingering. "Any bass player who sees me play knows I play something else. The technique … is everything combined: balafon, guitar, a vocal approach. It looks almost awkward. The way I move, it’s not a bass-playing move. Is it wrong? I don’t know," he confessed to National Public Radio. Bonafied includes 11 original tracks, working with voices, strings, and with pianist Etienne Stadwijk. "I love danger in music — I love to go in a place I’m not familiar with." The material is diverse: from the soukous sounds of Diba La Bobe to the tango of An Uprising of Kindness. All of those inherit from — and transform — styles Bona might have heard when he started gigging. The modern jazz that informs his improvisation on the closing track, On the Fourth of July, was discovered when one Yaounde bar owner gave him access to a stack of imported vinyl. "When I started listening to (Jaco Pastorius’s debut album) I wondered for a moment if I’d got the speed wrong, I thought I was playing it at 45rpm instead, and I even took a look. Before Jaco, I’d never thought of playing bass." Listeners will be glad he did, and even if his music is not yet in your collection, Bonafied is an excellent place to start
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 08:00:06 +0000
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