Richard Bona's world

Bassist, singer, storyteller

Paris 

05/12/2001 - 

Richard Bona, Cameroonian singer and bass-player extraordinaire, is currently back in the spotlight with his new album, Reverence. Richard B's second opus appears to have scored a big hit with fans and detractors alike, winning everyone over with its carefully-crafted songs, musical grace and virtuoso guitar-playing. RFI/Musique caught up with the Cameroonian wonder-boy in Paris.

Labouring to bring forth a second album is no easy business, especially when music critics are massed on the sidelines, waiting to decide whether you've achieved "artistic maturity" or not! Luckily for Richard Bona, Reverence is a master coup of an album – all ten tracks on it bold, idealistic and true to their creator's roots. Combining hard-hitting environmental messages with humorous anecdotes and local colour, Bona proves his worth as a songwriter and social observer and more than deserves his current success in New York. His captivating second album even includes contributions from 'surprise' American guest stars such as Pat Metheny and Michael Brecker.

Richard, your new album seems to be a lot more structured and painstakingly crafted than the last...
Richard Bona: Well, that's because this time round I had a lot more time to put things together. I'd say this album is still pretty much along the same lines as the last one, though. I might tell different stories, but they flow on from the stories on the first album. I still see myself as a storyteller essentially. With Révérence, there's a strong feeling of continuity, of picking up from where the story left off and carrying on.
I haven't changed my working methods in any way either. The only difference this time round was I spent a bit longer in the studio. In fact, I've set up my own studio at home now. If I wake up in the morning with a melody in my head, I can get down to work on it straightaway in the right conditions - and that makes life a lot easier. Come to think of it, maybe that's why the new album sounds a bit more mature than the last.

Do you think having acquired a certain experience in the music business also had an effect?
Yes, I suppose so. And I think it's fair to say that if I had to record the whole thing over again, it would sound even more crafted and mature. When I listen to the album now, I hear certain things I know I'd do differently now. Music is the exact reflection of what's going on around you in day-to-day life, you know. And life's a school where you get to learn new things with every moment that passes. Music's like that too, it works on exactly the same principle. Sometimes you get to a point where you feel you've seen and heard everything. And then, all of a sudden, you come across something new which brings you up short and makes you realise that you've still got an awful lot to learn! When I listen to an album that's finished, what I hear are all the things I could have done but didn't. I certainly don't listen to my albums in the same way as someone who hasn't lived the whole thing from beginning to end. I was the one who wrote the music and produced the album, so I can't help but listen to it with a critical ear.

Would you say you had a precise objective in mind when you sat down to work on Reverence or was it more a case of things falling into place as you collaborated with guest artists?
Things built up as we went along really. In fact, I find it difficult to sit down and plan out exactly what I'm going to do beforehand. I prefer to let things take their course and flow naturally. So I never really had a precise idea of what the whole thing would sound like once it was finished. It was only towards the end of our recording sessions that I started to really hear things and get an idea of how they were going to turn out.
You can never sit down and decide that a piece of music is going to sound like this and not that. You have to take the time to 'live' it. And even then, when you invite other people into the studio and get them to play on it, things can turn out totally differently from how you'd imagined. All it takes is for you to bring in a drummer who's got a completely different playing style from what you'd had in mind and wham! the whole things turned on its head! I think that's why you have to let the musicians you're working with voice their own feelings about your compositions. You have to give them a bit of freedom and let them put something of themselves into the music you're working on.

I get the feeling, listening to your new album, that you're trying to give 'world' music a new image somehow. Am I right?
Well, I feel the term 'world' has fallen into disrepute somehow. In fact, I don't really know whether there's an exact term to define things any more. Let's just say what I'm trying to do is breathe a breath of fresh air into things. I feel a need to bring something to the music world - and that need involves moving people's mentalities on back home and getting pleasure out of what I'm doing at the same time. I guess what I'm trying to say is I know how to do things a certain way and I do them. If you had to put a label on what I do, the only thing I can come up with is "Bona music". But, honestly, if you take a track like Reverence, I don't think you can say it was definitely me who wrote it. It could have been anyone really - James Taylor, for example! But if that were the case would people categorise it as 'world' music? I don't think so for one moment!

But people seem to like having some sort of guidance when they listen to music. They like to have their hand held...
Well, I refuse to do anything of the sort! I don't need anyone to hold my hand when I listen to music. I mean, where would they take me?!?

The songs on your new album paint a picture of the planet's ransack and ruin. I'm thinking in particular of songs like Te misea and Sweet Mary, which are real anthems against human stupidity...
I sing about what I see going on in the world around me – and, unfortunately, what I see is a world that's being totally mismanaged by those who live in it. You know, sometimes I think the human race really doesn't deserve to go on living on this planet. I mean, how is it that when water's one of the essential elements necessary to our survival, we're the first to turn round and pollute it? Water's essential, it's not an expendable thing like clothes. I mean, if the worst came to the worst, we could walk around naked. But water's a different thing altogether! And do you realise that an area the size of Belgium is wiped out in the Amazon every year? The oxygen we need to breathe is generated by those forests, and yet we sit back and allow people to cut them down!
You can't help but wonder sometimes! We human beings are a dangerous race! I think basically we need to be re-educated, you know, get back to simple human values in life. We don't need to pollute the seas and burn our forests. So why do it? For money, in most cases, that's why - and that's something for which I lay the blame at politicians' door.

Apart from the environmental message on your new album, there's a great deal of humour too. I'm thinking of the song Mbanga Kumba where you tell the story of a local train that goes so slowly you can run alongside it and jump on if you're late...
Mbanga Kumba is about this little train which runs back and forth between two towns. It chugs along so slowly and makes such frequent stops along the route that the place becomes famous for it in the end. That's an anecdote I took from my own childhood, in fact. Sometimes we'd get to the station and find that the local train had just left, so we'd run after it and hop on further down the line. It's good to tell these stories which people just can't imagine happening anywhere else. It's impossible for people living in France to believe things like that actually happen!
It's good to tell these stories - which are actually pretty funny when you stop and think about them - because they give us a means of sharing our experiences with others. I mean, imagine a train stopping at random because the driver feels like stopping off on the way home and buying a bit of meat or going to the toilet. Imagine he's driving along and he spots a bit of game for his tea so he stops to buy it. It's completely crazy... but it happened. After all, that's what freedom is, really, and at the same time I think it's rather wonderful too. It's good to include anecdotes like that on an album because it gives things a joyful, upbeat side.

In short, then, you've made an album where local anecdotes assume wider significance, summing up the state of the whole world. And I'm not just talking about Mbanga Kumbaeither. There's also Ekwa Moto, a song that insists on the importance of keeping in touch with your roots...
I think you have to be a good storyteller if you want to get your message across. And the basic message on Ekwa Moto is "there's no place like home". You have to keep your authenticity, you know, remain true to where you come from. That's what makes the world such a wonderfully diverse place - the fact that you can learn something from me and I can learn something from you, even though we come from two completely different corners of the world. And I'm not just talking about my roots or your roots. Ekwa Moto's about encouraging everyone to be proud of their roots, whether they come from a tiny village or the back of beyond. Everyone should be proud of their roots – because roots are one of our greatest riches in life.

There's another wonderful story on the album about a widow who's worn the same dress for five years, but then there's this big party where she comes back to life again and throws off her widow's weeds...
That's another story from back home. When a woman loses her husband you have this 'rites of passage' thing which goes on for years and years. She has to stop dressing in a certain way so that everyone can see she's a widow. But once the period of widowhood is over everyone throws a big party and she gets to begin a new life. On that day she gets to take off her widow's robes and dance with everyone. The dance is actually really happy and sad at the same time, because it dredges up lots of painful memories from the past. But at the same time it's totally liberating, because it marks the start of a new life. That's why I got my son to sing at the beginning of the track, in fact. I wanted to have a child's voice singing something fresh and innocent.

You claim that "Reverence is the last album in this particular style. I don't think I'll ever sing like this again. There are 452 pages in my book and two of them have already been turned. There's too much music in my head to stop here..."
Yes, that's right. I feel ready to move on and do something else now, but I'm not going to say what for the moment. I've just got to get on and do what I want to do – and people will find out what it is when it comes out!

Richard Bona Reverence (Sony/Columbia)

Soeuf  Elbadawi

Translation : Julie  Street