Bassist Richard Bona reflects on his intuitive rhythm ahead of Vancouver International Jazz Festival concert

With his new Asante Trio, the multi-talented artist explores the connection between African and Cuban music

By Alexander Varty

Richard Bona. Photo by Leesa Richards

Richard Bona Asante Trio plays the Vancouver International Jazz Festival on June 23 at 7:30 pm at the Vancouver Playhouse, as part of the Marquee Series

THAT RICHARD BONA is a consummately skilled bass player is evident to anyone with ears. In fact, one accomplished multi-instrumentalist I know calls Bona “the best bass player in the world”—and while that borders on the hyperbolic, there’s no doubt that he is the legitimate heir to the late Jaco Pastorius, who revolutionized the electric bass in the 1970s through his work with Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, and Pat Metheny.

Remarkably, Bona is an equally adept vocalist, with a warm and flexible tenor that readily conveys a sense of ease and intimacy. But great bass players and singers are, if not exactly common, not so rare as genuinely virtuosic all-round entertainers, which the Cameroon-born Bona most certainly is.

How do we know? The proof is in the patter.

Not for this affable star the usual “Hello, Vancouver! Good to see you” stage chat. Wherever he goes, Bona makes a point of remembering past visits—and more specifically, memorable meals that he might have had in that place. At the Leverkusener Jazztage festival in Germany, it’s the potato dish kartoffelen; in Vienna, Wiener schnitzel. What he remembers of Vancouver, we don’t know. Wild salmon? Fraser Valley strawberries? The so-called “California roll”, actually a local invention? But we’ll likely find out when Bona headlines the Vancouver International Jazz Festival at the Playhouse on June 23.

Cynics might say that this is simply effective stagecraft, but they haven’t seen Bona perform. A more genuine presence would be hard to imagine. He loves the stage, loves his work, loves the audience—and as we found out in a recent email interview, he loves food too. Getting a chance to explore the cuisines of the world is a definite bonus for the 57-year-old musician.

“Curiosity is everything for me,” he says. “I’m always listening, always learning. I travel, I cook, I talk to people, I study languages… Life inspires music. The [music] industry can be cold or cynical sometimes, but I don’t live in that world. I live in the world of sound and people. As long as I stay connected to that, the joy stays alive.”

He’s had good mentors in that regard. One of his first professional gigs in North America, after arriving in New York City circa 1995, was as singer and activist Harry Belafonte’s bandleader; later on, he established a close musical relationship with producer and arranger Quincy Jones. Both of those African-American elders possessed an uncanny ability to connect with their listeners without sacrificing artistic integrity, and Bona appears to have absorbed their shared ethos quite successfully.

“Working with Harry was a profound lesson,” Bona says. “He showed me that music can be a form of strong expression and compassion at the same time. Quincy—he was like a walking encyclopedia of wisdom. What I learned from both is that integrity matters. You can be successful without losing your soul. You just have to be intentional, and you must know who you are.”

“Music wasn’t a lesson—it was a language spoken around me from the beginning.”

As it happens, Bona was primed to see music as a way of building and sustaining community almost from birth. Bona’s grandfather was a griot, a member of a hereditary caste tasked with preserving cultural traditions and celebrating history in poetry and song. His mother was a singer. And when Bona himself began performing at four, it was as natural a development as learning to walk.

“In my village in Cameroon, being part of a griot family meant music was part of daily life,” he points out. “My grandfather was a storyteller, and my parents were both involved in music and oral traditions. The first instrument I played was the [marimba-like] balafon—we built them ourselves with wood and scraps, whatever we could find. Music wasn’t a lesson—it was a language spoken around me from the beginning.

“The balafon gave me a very intuitive understanding of harmony and rhythm at the same time,” he continues. “That shaped how I hear music. When I switched to guitar and later bass, I already had that internal rhythm and melodic awareness. The bass was a natural fit—it allowed me to speak rhythmically while supporting harmony.”

Just as importantly, Bona was also gaining a sense of music’s purpose, in addition to its structure. “I was raised with the belief that music is a tool for service,” he says. “It’s not about self-promotion; it’s about lifting others. You sing for the community, you play to heal, to celebrate, to remember. You become a vessel. That sense of responsibility stays with me every time I touch an instrument.”

One way this manifests is in Bona’s willingness to play whatever the music requires; he can shred with the best, but most of the time prefers to offer a rich harmonic foundation for whoever he’s working with. (Careful listening, however, will always unearth startling rhythmic complexity in the bassist’s ever-changing patterns.) And in his new trio, which makes its Vancouver debut at the jazz festival, he’s also exploring the breadth and depth of African music and its global influence.

The Asante Trio takes its name from the Swahili word for “thank you”, but a large part of its musical inspiration comes from Cuba, where West African and Iberian influences have cross-pollinated for centuries. The group—which features Havana-born pianist Jesús Pupo and Cuban-American drummer Ludwig Afonso—also touches on the notion that multiculturalism has been part of jazz since the beginning, from Jelly Roll Morton’s “Spanish tinge” to the Caribbean beats that inspired bebop pioneers Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, to the present day.

“Asante is a word full of gratitude and humility,” Bona explains. “For me, it captures the spirit of the trio—we’re saying thank you to the cultures that shaped us, to the people we meet, and to the music itself. But, yes, it also echoes the connection between Africa and Cuba. That shared history is in the rhythm, always—and music is one of the last true global languages. It reminds us of our shared humanity. When I play with musicians from Cuba, Japan, Brazil, or anywhere, it’s not ‘world music’, it’s just music.

“That mindset is urgently needed in these times,” he adds. “We need bridges, not walls!”

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