INTERVIEW Richard Bona

Wednesday November 03, 2010

from www.themusicnetwork.com

Richard Bona
By Tom Baepler

Do you remember the first time you heard about your latest favourite artist? Perhaps they caught your attention on the radio, or in an article in a newspaper or maybe a referral from a friend. You may even get that same rush of adrenalin when you first hear Cameroon born multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer Richard Bona, who travels to Australia in November for the Adelaide Guitar Festival (as well as gigs in Melbourne and Sydney).

He is known in musician circles as one of the world’s finest bass players, but he’s so much more as his new album The Ten Shades of Blues attests. Jazz great Pat Metheny thinks much of Bona too and has included him in his band for several years. Tom Baeppler, a long-time Bona convert, speaks to Richard prior to his Australian tour.

You say your new album The Ten Shades of Blues, has a blues theme, but from what I hear, you have a lot of different sounds, such as Indian and country… What do you think about the blues in those forms of music?

What is the blues? From a musician’s standpoint the blues is a scale, a pentatonic scale and is played all around the world. You hear that scale in Africa, of course you hear that scale In the Delta Mississippi, and you hear that in Indian music. You hear that in Irish music, and even the music that we usually call bluegrass. So I wanted to show in this record that the blues is actually one of the most diverse (kinds of) music, and one of the most sophisticated.

To read the rest of the interview click here

African Cowboy	5:07	Richard Bona
Good Times	4:34	Richard Bona

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