Scenes From My Life

I am a bit of a late-comer to Richard Bona.Coming from a background of Miles Davis, Manu Dibango, Allman Bros....Funk, Soul, Jazz etc. I found this album to be exquisit and the more you listen to it...the better it gets.Delicious!

Waste of money. Surprised with his playing ability.

Sajnos nem jutott el hozzám ez a lemez.

This CD has really been an eye-opener for me. Especially the last two tracks on the CD are so different and yet so lyrical that I was simply stunned. If you are new to african jazz or just enjoy good music, then do not hesitate to get your hands on those two tracks. Sure - some of the other stuff is pretty pop-like boring but who cares? This whole record is just a must have. PLEASE mr. Bona - make a live album soon. (and for all you machine music lovers out there. This is LIVE with rythms you cannot even program on many sequencers.)

Despues de muchos años como "buscador" de buena musica, no es sencillo sorprenderme.Bien... Bona lo hizo.Si bien pongo mi reseña en su primer disco. los dos siguientes lo superan!Lo cautivante es encontrar un musico que no ha perdido la frescura y la pureza de su tierra, y ha incorporado, gracias a su talento, una tecnica y un refinamiento poco comun. O sea, todo degustador de buena musica tiene un plato bien servido, con todos los ingredientes necesarios...Debo decir ademas que su musica se escucha con una sonrisa en los labios, esto no tiene precio...Ademas de recomendar sus tres discos como solista, traten de conseguir el de Mino Cilenu, casi agotado. este percusionista se acompaña con Bona, siendo este en realidad el artifice principal de los mejores temas.No importa mucho que musica les guste, Bona no los va a defraudar!

Great first album, to show what Bona will become. His writing is amazing and I love the african folk- fusion thing he does with his writing and his precious vocals. What a genius!

Very accurate

This is probably one of the best album of its kind. A fantastic blend of styles. This is the future of music

Every so often an artist arrives of such unnerving talent that he deserves to be noticed, usually more often than he is. Such is the case with Richard Bona, bassist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, one-time music director for Harry Belafonte and Joe Zawinul sideman. "Scenes from My Life" is his debut album, stepping out of the shadow of those fine artists he's worked with.Being an electric bass player in jazz means the inevitable comparisons to Jaco Pastorius need to be dealt with-- while many great bass players have been considered the heir-apparent to Jaco's legacy, I'd argue that Bona is in many ways the best bassist since Jaco. His playing is fluid, smooth, and subtle-- what made Jaco great to me, beyond his stunning talent was his ability to play subtlely. More importantly, he's his own man as a bassist-- Jaco's influence is clear, but there's no mistaking Bona's playing. Granted, Jaco always had the bass mixed way in front, and if there's a complaint to be made about "Scenes From My Life", it's that the bass is not mixed up front. His playing is sublime and really should be heard more clearly (this is a problem that is not replicated on later albums where the mix is much more bass-centric).Sung largely in Bona's native tongue (I don't have the liner notes in front of me, but I believe the language is called duala, native to people of the Camaroon), with one exception sung in English, the songs cover a number of jazz, rock, pop and funk moods. As a vocalist, Bona's high tenor is agile enough to carry a ballad with delicacy and sensitivity and move on a funk piece. One problem though is that the mix makes few adjustments for different moods of pieces, this causes parts of the album to sort of blend together into a "background music" mode, and sometimes midtempo seems to rule.Even in this environment, there's quite a few standout cuts here-- the gentle, groove based opener "Dipita", lovely piano-and-bass ballad "Eyala" (where Bona's bass playing, while terribly low in the mix is as Jaco-ish as it gets), funk number "Djombwe" (betraying a Stanley Clarke influence in the slap-and-pop bassline) English sung pop piece "One Minute", filled with arrangement subtleties and a fantastic bassline and strings-and-vocals "Muna Nyuwe", where Bona's vocal is filled with mournfulness and remorse without ever sounding pathetic.All criticisms aside (and really most of them have to do with the mix more than anything else), it's a solid debut by Bona, and it's clear that there's big things to expect from him in the future-- I'd recommend starting with "Reverence" for an introduction to him-- its a bit less accessible I think, but a vastly superior record. But this is a good one and worth having.