# Live review & Videos: Richard Bona’s Cuban-African fusion hits at Alte Wollfabrik Schwetzingen – Photo

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2024/09/30/live-review-videos-richard-bonas-cuban-african-fusion-hits-at-alte-wollfabrik-schwetzingen-photo/
- Published: 2024-09-30T00:05:44+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Richard Bona may have discovered jazz – and the electric bass – when he was 14,
but by then he was already a gifted singer, balafon player and dance band guitarist
in his native Cameroon.**

Those early influences still resonate in Bona’s music today, lending his style and
songs a uniquely multi-hued flavour.

Bona’s current band, too, is a reflection of this diversity, with members hailing
from Europe, Cuba and the US. Tightly focused and supremely polished, they rode 
the faster, fusion-oriented numbers on Friday night with palpable glee, but were
just as persuasive on softly lilting ballads like Mut’Esukudu.

On electric bass, the leader displayed a dexterity and lightness of touch that often
made the instrument sound more like a guitar or a second voice, supplying warm harmonies
and deft contrapuntal melodies as often as it dug into a funky swagger. Teen Town
showcased Bona’s bass jousting with the drums and trumpet in spirited mock duels,
while the Afro-Latin O Sen Sen Sen inspired some exuberant audience participation.

However, Bona’s most eloquent instrument is his voice. The set’s highlights came
when the band and the pulsating backbeat gave way to stripped-back simplicity. With
lyrics in his native Douala, the exquisite beauty and expressiveness of his vocals
shone on songs like Invocation and Samaouma, the latter a riveting solo number where
Bona used a loops pedal and layered vocal lines that mimicked a violin, guitar, 
bass and percussion to construct a one-man vocal orchestra.

The world music vocalist reveals his remarkable singing skills in an evening of 
coaxing dance rhythms and exultant percussive clamour

For over two decades, the Cameroonian singer-songwriter Richard Bona’s gifts as 
a world music vocalist of enchanting grace, and his dazzling sideline as a great
bass guitarist, have powered a unique fusion of west African music, pop, jazz, Cuban,
Brazilian and Caribbean grooves. And somehow, he has continued to stir up the most
rousingly communal music without ever seeming to hit anything hard or raise his 
remarkable voice.

Bona and his new Mandekan Cubano group – a sextet devoted to reappraising Africa’s
influence on Cuban rhythms – did just that on the first of their two nights in London.
A cruising Cuban chant was first invitingly warmed by gently goading trombone and
trumpet riffs and the clatter of timbales. Dennis Hernandez’s muted trumpet line
danced coaxingly around Bona’s falsetto on the ensuing ballad, and the first of 
a string of sparkling piano breaks from the superb Osmany Paredes opened in clipped
jazz phrases and sly trills and built to percussive chords.

The group exuded the amiable understatement of an old-school Havana restaurant band
on a bright groover built on tight brass counterpoint and brisker vocals of bustling
accents and wild yodels. The radiantly smiling leader shared a jokey call-and-response
with the audience before an exultant finale of horn hooks and percussion clamour.
The only downside was that Bona tightly rationed his bass-playing firepower – but
putting the vibe and meaning of music before any kind of grandstanding is always
his guiding light.

RICHARD BONA – bass, vocals
 CIRO MANNA – guitar ALEX HERICHON – trumpet MICA LECOQ–
keyboards NICOLAS VICCARO – drums

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