Richard Bona - 6

Performance - 7 July 2013 Bassist/vocalist Richard Bona was born in 1967 in the interior of East Cameroon. His grandfather was a village storyteller who taught him how to make musical instruments. He could play every instrument he laid his hands on. When he was 11 years old, his family moved to the harbour town of Douala. Here he fell in love with the guitar. He made himself a 12-string, using bicycle brake cables for strings, with which he played in local Bikutsi and Makossa bands. When a French jazz club opened in a hotel, the talented Richard was asked to form a band. At the time, Bona knew nothing about Jazz, but the hotel owner had hundreds of LP’s that he was allowed to listen to. The 1976 Jaco Pastorius (American Jazz bass player) album changed Richard’s life forever. He started concentrating on the bass guitar. Bona went o Germany and France for music studies and moved to New York in 1995. He performed with African Afro-pop stars such as Manu Dibango and Salif Keita and also more or