Richard Bona
Scenes From My Life

Richard Bona is famous not only for his exceptional skills as a bassist but also as a scat singer. And by listening to his debut album, "Scenes From My Life", the impression is that he is really getting into scat. But no, Richard sings in the Douala language, the language of Cameroon where he was born and raised. This alone is enough to intrigue and interest! Of course, that’s not all. The twelve songs featured are i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-e. They have an amazing quality, whether Bona tackles ballads/pseudo-ballads ("Muna Nyuwe, "Eyala") or more funk-inspired tracks ("Dipita, "Djombwe"), where his love for Jaco Pastorius is fully manifested.

The album, featuring just to name two Michael Brecker and Omar Hakim, is very varied and damn fascinating: Bona's voice takes us to Central West Africa on an exotic and sensual journey. To make Richard's singing a little less distant, the booklet includes brief descriptions of the song topics. But in the end, what’s the point? The singing isn’t distant. Yes, it’s another language, totally unfamiliar, but it’s all so... human. You can perceive, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating, the solidarity and love in his voice, the struggles of a difficult life, and the joy of achieving a first milestone. From the first track ("Dipita", one of the best), you buy a ticket to distant destinations: it’s a dive into an unknown culture, with relentless bases over omnipresent percussion, a deep and fresh voice, and guitars, drums, organs, keyboards, and saxophones. But "Scenes From My Life" is anything but a difficult album: Bona has succeeded in the challenging task of blending his world and culture with jazz and vaguely funk attitudes, but a funk that is anything but raw and dirty; the album always maintains a line of sophistication and good taste, where delicacy and joy coexist in this sensational debut.

Not an absolute masterpiece, because the album doesn’t hold up under repeated listening in a short time, but certainly an album of great value, deserving full marks for Richard Bona's masterful ability to put his talents (he plays most of the instruments well) at the service of great songs: never a note too few, never a note too many.