Roman Bunka (2 December 1951 – 12 June 2022) was a German guitarist,oud player and composer, active inworld music andjazz fusion bands. He lived most of his life inMunich, Bavaria, where he was involved in variousmusical crossover projects.
Bunka was born inFrankfurt on 2 December 1951.[1] He started playing the guitar as a teenager. In the 1970s, he moved to Munich and joined the world music groupEmbryo. They toured in Morocco, India and Afghanistan, and the music of these countries made a strong impact on Bunka and his fellow musicians.[2][3] In 1979, Embryo traveled overland to India with three buses and their instruments.[4] The tour was documented in the movieVagabunden Karawane.[5]
Besides the guitar, his second instrument was the Arabicoud, which he studied mainly inEgypt.[1][6][7] Having spent long periods of time there, he often played in the band of Egyptian singer and movie actorMohamed Mounir,[1] for example at the New Year's Eve concert in 2000 at thePyramids of Giza.[2][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 musiciansMal Waldron,Charlie Mariano andMalachi Favors, as well as with Indian and Egyptian performers Trilok Gurtu,Ramesh Shotham, Fathy Salama and others.[11] German music criticRalf Dombrowski wrote about Bunka's 2004 recordOrientación 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 andOrientalism."[12]
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.[13] Bunka died ofcancer on 12 June 2022, in Munich at the age of 70, with both Egyptian and German newspapers publishingobituaries.[1][3][14]
