Dante Bucci
Reminiscence
Dante Bucci fuses world music and melodic indie rock with his pioneering approach to the Hang drum.
Dante is a fixture in the Philly indie music scene and one of the most-recognized Hang players in the world, thanks to a constantly-expanding list of subscribers and over three million viewers on his YouTube channel (youtube.dantebucci.com).
Dante plays past the Hang’s ambient, meditative tendencies with insistent melodies and deft percussive strikes. He creates distinct, compelling, hummable songs, sometimes playing two Hangs at once to create a layered, polyrhythmic sound. His debut EP, Reminiscence, adds muscular band arrangements to his songs, which translate with ease to live shows that move bodies and rattle windows.
Solo or backed by a band, Dante’s music always commands a hush - rooms fall silent for him everywhere from neighborhood bars to local venues like the Tin Angel, MilkBoy, and The World Café Live.
A relatively new invention, the Hang drum (pronounced “hung”) is a melodic, inverted steel percussion instrument born in Bern, Switzerland, circa 2000. The Hang looks like a steel drum crossed with a UFO, and has its own distinctive voice that draws comparisons to steel pans, harps, and even synthesizers. Each drum sings its own harmony, with a root in the center and a scale arrayed around the circumference. The resulting sound makes it perfect as background music for a gallery opening or as an indelible lead singer at a rock concert.
The unique features of the Hang are a perfect match for Dante's eclectic musical history. In college he picked up every instrument in sight - from guitars to bass flutes to conga drums. He quickly emerged as an in-demand percussionist, which lead to nearly a decade of fruitful collaboration with dozens of local Philadelphia artists like Bevin Caulfield, Kuf Knots, Irene Molloy, Lelia Broussard, and Philly-based Manhattan Records artist Mutlu.
Now Dante is the center of his own songs. His classical and percussionist experience aids him in pulling sounds out of the Hang that no one else has made - or can figure out how to replicate. From delicate harmonic overtones to deep djembe-like thumps, he pushes the boundaries of the instrument farther than any other player on the planet.
World: World Beat