Wolfgang Barthel: In Search Of...

A 'world fusion' trio from Eastern Bavaria produced three gorgeous private press LPs in the mid- to late 1980s

Bauer, Barthel, Böhm in the 1980s (photo courtesy of W. Barthel)

In 1976, a young Bavarian psychology student traveled to Turkey and heard local musicians playing the saz or bağlama, a traditional long-neck lute.

“I got goosebumps from its microtones”, Wolfgang Barthel recounts almost half a century later, on the phone from his home in Regensburg.

On that …