Richard Bona between two worlds

A Musician on the Move.

Paris 

23/09/2003 - 

Cameroonian bass-player Richard Bona has played with a host of major international stars including Paul Simon and Pat Metheny. Bona, who is now based in New York, is currently back in the music news with his third, acoustic, album Munia/The Tale. Written at the beginning of the Iraq war, the album features a collection of brooding, melancholic songs and an impressive list of guest stars.

RFI Musique: Africa seems to be more present than ever on your new album. Does this mark some sort of return to your roots?
Richard Bona: No, I'd say it's actually more of a continuity because I've always been deeply in touch with my roots. Although it’s true to say that this time round I've taken a bit more of an acoustic approach and the new album sounds a bit more 'produced.' I've tried to be more minimalist, too. But the main difference is this time round I was able to record a lot of stuff at home in Brooklyn. That's a real luxury, being able to work on a moment of inspiration as soon as it happens.

You set the tone of your new album with the opening track, Bonatology...
I wanted to kick things off with a sort of Gregorian chant but African-style, you know, have something that sounded really old and medieval that would immediately take me back to my roots. Stuff like that's pretty intangible, though. It's like when I was a kid growing up in my village (Minta, in eastern Cameroon), I used to sit there on the ground making a game out of nothing and I was completely happy like that. I've never forgotten where I come from, you know. I can still hear my grandfather saying, "Whenever you're wavering over which way to go, just look behind you down the path you've travelled and that way you'll know whether to go right or left!" What's important is what kind of approach you choose to take to music. I've taken on board a lot of different influences and learnt to play a lot of different instruments (balafon, keyboards, guitar and percussion), but I've been a bit dissipated really. But when I have to cope with tricky technical problems in concert, for instance, I'm good at controlling my impatience and relativising things because when I started out all I had was a microphone.

Artistically speaking, what difference has it made to you being based in the U.S.?
Well, I have to say this really is the ideal place to make music if you want to do it in a professional way. I've been living here for seven years now and I've got this really comfortable working set-up. I've got a manager and a team of lawyers so I don't have to get bogged down in discussing contracts and stuff like that any more. I can just get on with my music. I love France but you have to admit it's not a country with a strong music tradition. Sure, the public's there, but there are hardly any specialist clubs or venues. In New York if I want to go out and listen to blues or go to rock concerts every night of the week - and we're talking concerts by big name stars here, you're pretty much spoilt for choice. For just 10 dollars you can go out there and listen to great musicians playing really great music.

I notice that you got Salif Keita to guest on the song Kalabancoro...
Salif is one of my favourite singers. I'd written quite a lot of the songs for the album but I knew I was going to put that one aside for Salif. Salif and I know each other really well. We've worked together before and we're on the same label now. What happened was I went out to join him at his place in Mali and we spent three days together in the studio recording Kalabancoro. It's a song about things being neglected and forgotten, which is a pretty universal theme, but I was also aware that Salif had gone through that himself at some point. I got the inspiration for the song just as war in Iraq was breaking out. I really thought the strong would step in to protect the weak but we're a long way from that now. At the end of the day the U.N. didn't count for anything. We still live in a world where might is right!

You've collaborated with a lot of other artists in the past, but you manage to round up your fair share of guest stars on this album. Saxophonist Kenny Garrett guests on a particularly striking instrumental...
Yes, the track you're talking about is a tribute to Miles Davis. I originally tried to do the piece with a trumpet, but that ended up sounding too Miles. So I went off to see Kenny Garrett play at The Iridium one night and we came up with the idea of trying the piece with two saxophones, a tenor and a soprano sax. We ended up doing the piece in one take, just using the tenor sax, in fact. There are other guests on the album, too, of course. I invited my music 'sisters' to come along and do backing vocals – that's Coco Mbassi and Valérie Bélinga and then there's Senegalese guest singer Julia Sarr as well. The backing vocals were recorded in Paris, the Peul flute was recorded with the Guinean musician Bailo Ba and the kora with Djeli Moussa Condé in Paris. I like branching out in a lot of different directions.

The whole album's recorded in Douala apart from the track Bona petit where you sing in French...
Well, I actually wrote the song in Douala first, then I got my wife, who's French, to translate it. Bona petit uses a Brazilian bossa nova rhythm played by guitarist Romero Lubambo. The song's a bit of a family affair, in fact – you can hear my four-year-old son laughing in the background at one point!

Children seem to play an important role in your music...
Yes, they do, I always try and put aside a couple of days to go along and play for kids. Recently, I went out to a school in a pretty poor neighbourhood in New York. It was the first time a musician had gone out to play there in eight years. There are schools in the neighbourhood running with no cash at all. Teachers have to pay for stationery and ink cartridges for the fax themselves... I know that sounds totally unreal, but I assure you it's true.

Have you got any other projects on the go at the moment?
Yes, I've just written the music for a children's cartoon show that's being broadcast on Japanese TV, on the NHK channel. I worked on Pat Metheny's last album and on Mike Stern's, too.

Why did you decide to swap record labels?
Well, the first two albums came out on Columbia in the U.S. I had a contract to do six albums with them. But the thing is, I was originally signed to the label by the Marsalis brothers, who are both musicians. But when they left everyone was trying to get me to do covers and all this 'African in New York' style stuff like Sting. And it got to the point where I just couldn't see how I fitted in there any more. I write my own material, you know, so that cover stuff just wasn't me. My musical culture's Jaco Pastorius and Weather Report, not Sting! Even if you're going to do cover versions they've got to be something that comes from the heart, not something you've had imposed on you. Those are good enough reasons for moving on, don't you think?

Richard Bona will be appearing at "La Cigale" in Paris on 5 November 2003 as part of a French tour.

Pascale  Hamon

Translation : Julie  Street