Bona Penda Nya Yuma Elolo (Richard Bona) – Bass

Bona Penda Nya Yuma Elolo was born in Minta, Cameroon into a family of musicians, which enabled him to start learning music from a young age. His grandfather was a griot – a West African singer of praise and storyteller – and percussionist, as his mother was a singer. When he was four years old, Bona started to play the balafon. At the age of five, he began performing at his village church. Not being wealthy, Bona made many of his own instruments: including flutes and guitars (with cords strung over an old motorcycle tank). Bona has performed with Pat Metheny, Mike Stern, Joe Zawinul and a host of other legends of Jazz and World Music.

This chart is an experiment for me. I would never have attempted this previously but a friend (Tim Ainslie – see the chart ‘In & Out’ on this website) introduced me to Moises software which allows you to remove all the other instruments and isolate the bass or simply bring it up in the mix so you can hear all of the ghost notes. The chart is pretty much unreadable but, if you spend some time on the detail, you will realise that it is mostly a four bar pattern repeated with some other four bar patterns. There are some slap/pop sections that I hate transcribing but I started so I’ll finish. This new (to me) software is really going to open a lot of doors for me by allowing me to hear details I couldn’t previous access.

The track is ‘Jokoh Jokoh’ from the Richard Bona/Madekan Cubano ‘Heritage’ album that came out in 2016 but had eluded me until recently.