Richard Bona

I just got back from the radio 3 london jazz festival where richard bona played at the queen elizabeth room of the royal festival hall @ the south bank.
The show started at about 8.20pm and lasted for about an hour and a half.It was my first time of seeing him live, though i have known about him and his music for about 4 or 5 years and happen to have all his cds from 'Reverence, Scenes from my life, Munia-the tale and the latest 'Tiki' not forgetting his collaboration 'toto bona lokua'.
The room was made for 'live' music, acoustically prefect. His band was made up of ernesto simpson from cuba on drummers, Samuel torres (colombia)on percussion, etienne stadwijk (holland)Tom haskins trunpet (USA) and lastly john Coban( USA) on guitars.Richard himself on bass (he's from cameroun). Seeing him live was a dream come true cos he's such a show man and gave us all our money's worth!!The high point of the show was his solo preformance were he sang in his native tongue(douala which he normally does anyway) and over dubbed himself live right there, he sang a part ,recorded it there, played that part back, sang another part, stood back listen and played another, in short it was like 3 or 4 richard bonas playing different part of a song ,like you would have an acapella group play.. it was magic ....!!.he runs such a tight band and he highly recommended for those that want and love live music.
It's such a big shame that we had must more white than black people in the house!! is it me or we, as black people seem not to appreciate 'ours'! Same thing i noticed when i went to see john legend(another good show) @ the royal albert hall, we were so out numbered it was unbelievable!! like 75 to 25 percent !!maybe it's the environment or we just dont appreciated good music !!Finally all i can say to you is, if you haven't 'discovered' richard bona please go out and get all his cds, forget that he sings in a 'foreign'language, just enjoy his music and let it take you places. if you don't enjoy his music i will refund the cost of the cd to you !!