The Cameroon-born artist was exposed to music at a very early age because he came from a family of musicians. Speaking in an interview with Today's Zaman, he says his family members were his first inspiration. “My grandfather is a musician, my mother is a musician, I was surrounded by musicians, all my cousins are musicians. There is a saying: ‘When we take a little kid and surround him with fishermen, there is a good chance he's going to be a fisherman.' And that's what happened to me,” he explains. When Bona first began to play music, it was on the balofon. He later created his own flutes and guitars and eventually switched to electric bass. “Electric bass came when I was 16 years old and I heard a record. When I heard that record, something changed in my mind,” he says, adding that he was playing guitar at the time but that he always accepted a challenge. “I said to myself, ‘Wow, I want to play bass like that,' and that day I took all the guitar strings out of my guitar, and my guitar became a four-string bass. I showed up at the place where I had my job, where I used to play guitar, and said, ‘Now I have a bass,' and they told me, ‘We already have a bass player.' And I said, ‘You have to fire him, because now I'm the bass player. I'm not a guitar player anymore because I don't want to play guitar anymore. Now I'm a bass player',” he recalls.
Throughout his career, Bona has collaborated with many musicians, including Manu Dibango, Salif Keita, Jacques Higelin and Didier Lockwood. “You always learn a lot from any musician you play with. And I was so lucky to be playing with a lot of varied musicians. You know, I played with Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and George Benson. I played with John Legend, with Mike Stern,” he says. His collaborations also included a session with Turkish percussionist Burhan Öçal, whom he bills as a wonderful musician.
In 1994 Bona released his first solo album, “Scenes of My Life.” With his latest and ninth album, “The Ten Shades of Blues,” released this year through Universal Jazz, he wanted to show people that blues can be sophisticated. “Blues is a style that people play everywhere, from the Middle East to Africa. In India … in the US. Even the cowboys play the blues,” Bona says. “Blues is everywhere; its real location is in the heart.”
The 41-year-old musician says he has changed a lot since moving to New York City, the capital of jazz clubs. “I got to play with all those jazz musicians, and so many I can't remember right now, and they brought so much light to me. Basically, what I am doing is learning as much as possible, to add to my background,” he explains, adding that his aim is to make his sound even richer and more unique. “I think all of these musicians brought a lot to my music, because I'm a student of music, and I always want to be a student of music. My conception of music and my conception of life in general is, ‘I know that I don't know',” he says. Apart from his own musical performances, Bona is also a professor of music at New York University. He says teaching enables him to learn more from his students. “They make fun of me when I tell them, ‘I learn so much more from you guys than you learn from me.' And it's fun.”
Asked about his previous experiences of Turkey, he notes that a friend of his bought him an oud the last time he was in İstanbul. “I'm the king of the oud. You've got to see me playing the oud,” he jokes. “I'm the best oud player outside of Turkey.” Bona concludes by noting that his concert Saturday evening will include music from all of his albums. He says the concert will be “all about fun” and adds: “Tell everyone that we are coming to rock it in İstanbul. We're gonna burn them with fun.”
