| Roman Bunka | |
| Birth Date: | 2 December 1951 |
| Birth Place: | Frankfurt, Hesse, West Germany |
| Death Place: | Munich, Bavaria, Germany |
Roman Bunka (2 December 1951 – 12 June 2022) was a German guitarist, oud player and composer, active in world music and jazz fusion bands. He lived most of his life in Munich, Bavaria, where he was involved in various musical crossover projects.
Bunka was born in Frankfurt on 2 December 1951. He started playing the guitar as a teenager. In the 1970s, he moved to Munich and joined the world music group Embryo. They toured in Morocco, India and Afghanistan, and the music of these countries made a strong impact on Bunka and his fellow musicians.[1] In 1979, Embryo traveled overland to India with three buses and their instruments.[2] The tour was documented in the movie Vagabunden Karawane.
Besides the guitar, his second instrument was the Arabic oud, which he studied mainly in Egypt.[3] [4] [5] Having spent long periods of time there, he often played in the band of Egyptian singer and movie actor Mohamed Mounir, for example at the New Year's Eve concert in 2000 at the Pyramids of Giza.[6]
In 1994, Bunka presented his ethno jazz project Color me Cairo, featuring Malachi Favors of Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Egyptian musicians Fathy Salama, Hosam Shakir and Khaled Goma at the Berlin Jazz Festival, curated by George Gruntz.[7] The same line-up was recorded by Enja Records, with Rolling Stone magazine writing: "Bunka gets fame in a growing musical diaspora as 'best oud-player north of Mekka'."[8]
Bunka was known for his artistic collaboration with German and international musicians, such as the German world music groups Embryo, Dissidenten and Jisr, but also with jazz musicians Mal Waldron, Charlie Mariano and Malachi Favors, as well as with Indian and Egyptian performers Trilok Gurtu, Ramesh Shotham, Fathy Salama and others.[9] German music critic Ralf Dombrowski wrote about Bunka's 2004 record Orientación with fellow musicians Luis Borda and Jost Heckler: "He is one of the first European musicians who dared to seriously explore the oud and liberated it from exoticism and Orientalism."[10]
During his 50-year career, Bunka recorded and played concerts with numerous musical groups, and also composed soundtracks for movies. A few weeks before his death, he played with the Munich-based group Jisr (Arabic for 'bridge') at concerts in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh.[11] Bunka died of cancer on 12 June 2022, in Munich at the age of 70, with both Egyptian and German newspapers publishing obituaries.[12]