Richard Bona

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Richard Bona was born in 1967 in Minta, a village in the center of Cameroon, into a musical family (his mother and sisters were singers) and as a little boy he joined rest of the family to sing in the church when he was five. He began learning to play the guitar at age 11, and in 1980 aged just 13, he assembled his first band for a French jazz club in Douala. There Richard discovered jazz, the freedom, and first time heard his early idol - Jaco Pastorius.
In 1989, when he was 22, the young man left Africa for Paris, where he quickly built a solid reputation playing with jazz greats such as Didier Lockwood, Marc Fosset and André Ceccarelli.
Soon Bona became even more famous and one of the most in-demand collaborators in music, working with a remarkable array of artists, such as Michael Brecker, Paul Simon, Chaka Khan, Mike Stern, Larry Coryell, Steve Gadd, Joni Mitchell, Harry Connick Jr., Herbie Hancock, Billy Cobham, Bobby McFerrin, Chick Corea, Zawinul, Pat Metheny and George Benson.
Bonna currently holds a professorship of music at New York University.

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