#7: Robby Parker

12/22/22 • 27 min

Faraway is Close: a podcast from Shebana Coelho

"For me success as a musician is to play what I hear and that has been my goal for my whole life....You sit down and you try to hear what's in the air and reproduce."~ Robby Parker.
On this episode, a new segment of What Arises in Encounter featuring guest story-travelers and their creative journeys, In this third segment, an encounter with musician Robby Parker who created lovely oud compositions for my documentary, Nasario remembers the Río Puerco (nasarioremembers.com, available on Vimeo on Demand) and with whom I collaborated on a poem set to music, Clay.

About Robby:
Robby Parker secretly wanted to be a rock star. Since he couldn’t admit it, life made him a world music vagabond. His deep fascination with culture, language, people’s spiritual beliefs, and plucked instruments has led him to study and perform throughout the Middle East, Europe and North America. He loves wearing sandals, long robes, walking with animals in the streets and drinking fresh 50 cent mango smoothies.

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Previous Episode

#6: On the Island, ep 1

On this podcast of Faraway is Close: episode 1 of On the Island, a storypoem spoken and written by Shebana Coelho.
"On the Island, a boy called Riiaz stood in his rubber boots on the deck of the boat where he fished."

A curious storypoem about recovering the old songs that I wrote some years ago. I've never been able to define it and I kept hearing it. It felt like it needed to be spoken.
Oh and there are lobsters in the story too.
Riiaz is an island boy who, one day, stops fishing and throws the lobsters he has caught back into the sea; Zillahz is a lobster who take a stand against the might of men and nets, and her father Miryal is the great lobster of the deepening sea who transforms himself into a human to confront the village of men -all to save the old songs, the ones that save us.
This is the first episode. The second episode will arrive next week. Consider this my return to podcasting after some months of radio silence. This was really a lot of fun to record. There are a few melodies in in - flamenco, an Irish lament, a raga. I wrote it some years ago but speaking, listening, singing, humming, I feel I am rediscovering it. Re living it as something that has its own life.
I'll be glad to hear what your responses. Email me at info at shebanacoelho dot com. Shukriya. Gracias. ~ Shebana

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Next Episode

#8: The Abyss, Part One

On this episode, the voice unadorned speaking of the abyss behind me, inspired by two powerful Spanish documentaries, Pico Reja and A Las Mujeres de España, and a quote from one of them by a writer named Rosa Montero who said:
Women have always had to start from scratch because they've not had the testimony of women before them. And that's a terrible disgrace. Because culture is a palimpsest. We all build on what was built before. So if you always have an abyss behind you...~ Rosa Montero, translated from Spanish, quoted in A las mujeres de España. María Lejárraga
The quote moved me into starting a 13 day blog series: 13 Days of the Abyss Behind me. 13 because I've always liked that number, especially as an age. Read the text at shebanacoelho.com/blogcast.
This is Part one of the Abyss, Days One to Eight. My hope is that one story inspires another, that the abyss, being spoken, becomes a bridge, a way to connect.

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