IAP Political Forum

I went to see Richard Bonna in concert. At first -I haven't heard about him before- it didn't seem to me interesting, but one of my cousins told me -well, he almost forced me- that we had to go.

- We can't miss this concert, he is a superb bass guitar player.

- Where is he from? I asked him

- He is from Cameroon and plays a very good jazz.

With this tiny info about Mr. Bonna, we bought two tickets, even when I was not so confidence about myself and the show we were about to see.

Bonna stepped on the stage and as soon as I heard the first song, I said to myself, "man, this is gonna be an ethnic concert and I'm not very keen on ethnic music"

What a terrible mistake!

The concert went on and suddenly those ethnic rhythms of the very first song, turned into a deep and powerful jazz style that kept my attention for the whole show.

Bonna went on singing and playing his bass guitar. The way he played his bass guitar was simply amazing. But it was not only his "out of this world" playing, but his singing was so sweet that he was able to fill up the room, just with his voice.

At the middle of the concert -the band was playing for near two hours- Bonna was alone on the stage and I saw two microphones on it. Two microphones? What for? I thought to myself.

Folks, what we saw I haven't seen it before in my life. One of the microphones was plugged into  a pedalboard loop, so every little tune sang by Bonna was recorded and reproduced in a loop. With the other microphone he was constructing a song. We had nothing at the beginning and we saw and heard how he was adding one voice, a second voice, a third one, a fourth.....I guess he recorded at least 6 different voices and, folks, the bass guitar line only using his voice. The result was an amazing track formed by a very large lyrics sentences -I still don't understand how he could keep in mind such an enormous amount of lyrics- full of tone and musical richness.

Mr. Bonna's band was formed by an international group of people. A guy from Holland on the keyboards. A man from Cuba on drums. Another one from Colombia on percussion. And finally, two guys from New York, one of them on guitar and the other one on trumpet. After the concert I got the impression that Bonna was a very clever guy who had done a very good job, selecting the members of the band. They were some sort of multicultural meltdown group, that only a smart brain could been able to join together.

I had always thought that there were two unbeatable concerts in my life : Spyro Gira, that played over here years ago and Frank Zappa that I saw live in Madrid -I may rest in peace after FZ's concert- but Richard Bonna's concert has to be added to that list.

Highly recommended, folks!