Schneeball Records
distribution: INDIGO
Obituary:
Roman Bunka, pioneer of world music
Schneeball-records bids farewell to Roman Bunka
What a fine human being, what a loss! Born in Frankfurt in 1951, he died on June 12, 2022 in Munich.
This city, which would become home to him and his family all his life, was his destination when, as a very young man, he first left his excellent parents to become a musician. The 1970s had begun. Interest in rock music from Germany quickly faded and, if any interest remained, then only abroad.
Record companies cancelled contracts. Bands fell apart. The LP “We Keep On” was the answer from Munich, where Christian Burchard and Roman Bunka dared a new start with EMBRYO as a collective. I was there as producer and publisher. It cost a lot of energy and it earned scarcely any income, but it was an inevitable step on the long road to independent music and an alternative distribution system. It was something for idealists – and Roman Bunka fit right in. With the founding of Schneeball Records (Roman was a founding member), the reputations of the participating artists grew, along with a new youth movement around them.
Roman composed, sharpened vocals and solos, created graphics for covers, and took a serious interest in music and literature beyond his cultural milieu. On a journey to India in the mid-1970s, he laid the cornerstone for the concept of his further artistic work – his search for music, for the people behind it, and for collegial sharing with them. A new alliance developed between him and Munich-based filmmakers who, like him, realized their works outside the mainstream: Werner Penzel, Fritz Baumann, Niko Humpert. Penzel’s film “Vagabond Caravan” documented EMBRYO’s journey to India and back.
Together with Roman, Fritz Baumann pursued the secrets of the oud (Arab lute). After Roman’s separation from EMBRYO, Baumann was also the one who sensitively chronicled Roman’s time with the band in a film titled “Roman Bunka: Dein Kopf ist ein schlafendes Auto” (“Roman Bunka: Your Head is a Sleeping Car”).
In between, Roman Bunka took part in the creation of the band “Dissidenten.” Performances by the Dissidenten were always also performances by Bunka.
One day, after several stays with EMBRYO in Cairo, he arrived where musicians always want to be. With Egypt’s superstar Mohammed Mounir as the band’s guitarist, he played the biggest halls and most exclusive clubs – but this went mostly unnoticed here in Germany because these prestigious venues were in North Africa and the Near East.
There too, his friends mourn his death, as they do in India, where he toured with Jisr. After completing an extensive tour of Asia, he returned in very poor health to Munich, where he died soon afterwards.
If Munich is considered to be a nucleus of what is now called “world music,” then the credit is largely due to Roman Bunka, whose lifework thus gains a quality that goes far beyond music.
http://www.romanbunka.de/