It all began with a slip of the tongue.
We were talking about music, when I intended to say "The Lonely Shepherd" (an instrumental piece by James Last, famously performed by the Romanian panflutist Gheorghe Zamfir) but my mind mixed it up with "The Barber of Seville" ( the Rossini opera)-- in Bulgarian the words shepherd and barber sound kind of alike. Alas I cannot remember the exact flow of the conversation, but this sudden word combination amused my father, who found it (inexplicable to me) incredibly witty and began to impersonate himself as the newly found, still vaguely known to us image of the lonely barber to the extent he even adopt this as a moniker.
An oxymoron in its core I am still not sure what a lonely barber really means. But when it came down to naming my band this was the very first thing which occurred to my mind. Let's say it just sounded right to me. Lately I began to find the matching points between the idea behind the band and my spontaneous choice.
A barber is a storyteller, a bard and even a medical assistant (in Medieval times). Thus he can be seen as a social figure and mediator -- when he is lonely, though, his primal function is somehow transformed to some introvert roamer gathering wisdom and power from nature and the past (as the loneliness often implies a sense of nostalgia and nostalgia here is used more in the sense of peace and stillness :) .
Here is the first recording of "Lonely Barber". It is an arrangement of a couple romanian folklore tunes played by me (guitar) and my father (pan flute).
Romanian -- because my father is a huge fan and because to me this particular folk music has the fine balance between native authentic rough sound and the modern intricate precise jazzy feel.
I didn't have my band at this point, that's why we used it as my father's artistic name.
Later, as I said before, I took it for my own purpouses as well.
Hope you enjoy it!
https://m.soundcloud.com/user-597560448/the-lonely-barber-romanian-mood
To be continued...
