Richard Bona – Bass

I missed this one completely when it came out but it found its way onto my Youtube feed somehow (a whole gig with the Mandekan Cubano band). It’s a great album and I have already done a couple off it but this tune appeared on my shuffling mp3 player and sounded great so here we are. There is a lot to chew on here; the opening and closing phrase (it’s not as hard as it sounds) but, as always with Mr. Bona, it’s all of the ghost notes he plays that make transcribing him a challenge. In truth, you could probably ignore all of the shots notes and it would still sound great as the percussion covers the same territory but not including them in the transcription felt like a cop-out.

The tune is ‘Kivu’ from the 2016 ‘Heritage’ album.