It’s rare in today’s vast musical landscape that an up-and-coming artist can create something with a distinct, unique voice that is entirely theirs. It takes time, patience and experience to figure out where your soul as an artist lies, especially when you’re doing it alone. Luckily for him, music industry veteran Michele Ducci has been in-and-out of bands for over ten years, with immense success working with some major names. He’s no spring chicken to the world of music, and has no difficulty crafting a track.
Much later into his career, however, Michele came to the conclusion that he wanted to ride solo making his own music for a while. Since then, he has taken a deep dive into his own personality to forge a remarkably unique vision that is reflected beautifully in his new album, “NUBA Live Tape”.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Michele directly to find out more about his creative process, journey as an artist and the inspirations behind his latest release.
The Mind, the Motive and the Music
For Michele, finding his artistic voice came rather naturally. There was no life-altering event, no important conversation and no advice from other artists. Everything Michele put into his music came directly from the essence of the life around him.
“I found myself in the middle,” he said. “I have no memories that are not made of music: air dust entering the rooms and the landscapes that are sounds, from the fronds of the trees to the comings and goings of the cars. At the bottom of every image I have always lived this acoustic experience that seems to me one of the immediate data of feelings.”
As with many artists, Michele saw importance in surrounding himself with likeminded people, which is why he started his former band, “M+A”. Later, he would work with artists Rejjie Snow, Mick Jenkins and producer Supah Mario to form “Santii”, who released two EPs. During this time, he focused tirelessly on using his remarkable talents to irreplaceably contribute to their output. It was after a short-lived stint in a third band that Michele decided he wanted to pursue his dreams as a solo artist.
“I started with bands, always writing my own songs, and every time I did everything I could to bring the songs, the soundscapes that are perhaps my inner life, the inner life of an image, to light,” the artist explained. “I do the rest like a sleepwalker. I started this solo project to return to this essential practice that is of vital importance to me.”
“NUBA Live Tape” and the Journey that Follows
While “NUBA Live Tape” isn’t Michele’s first stint as a solo artist, it is inarguably his biggest release to date. Not only is it his first major release since June 2024‘s “SIVE”, but is also an album that he believes gave him a healthier and clearer view of the world he lives in.
“Dealing with what you do, having that little bit of wild faith that is needed to continue without possibilities. Do without the possible and follow only the real,” he explained. “I would say that I always try to free myself from the possibility to get to a little light that is pure reality, a life, a song: immanence freed from all the predicates and in its vibrant singularity.”
“In Nuba, as well as in SIVE, there is this on-site journey that involves keeping on the horizon that migrant and that passenger that we all are: to become a landscape.”
While working on the release, Michele realised he was changing with his music – that the road it led him on helped him develop as a person too, claiming, “It’s a situation in which it is the process at work painting things. You have to surf it!”.
With the development being a rather personal journey, Michele feels his final music releases give listeners both a clear view into his passions but also serve in allowing them to learn more about theirs too. There’s no tall-tales – everything within his music is genuine and from the heart.
“I think my music is honest, sincere: I only and exclusively carry the song that I am and the songs that I meet. For me they are like people. I believe that in the end it is really about becoming what you are and that it is this light that is the trait that stands out like a morning that is illuminating itself elsewhere in the shining light of the sun,” he told us.
The Man Behind the Melodies
It’s arguably impossible to start a successful music career without a little soul. No, not the genre soul – the life that breeds and nurtures a tune, that finds the voice within and allows it to shine. For Michele, he feels he wouldn’t have been able to find his without the help of his many friends, partners and collaborators.
“My dear friend Rocco Ronchi, a great Italian philosopher, with whom we have often confronted ourselves on the fact that a song is a bit like seeing a star that may have disappeared thousands of years ago: the past, the experience, is a chorus, making himself heard in the first person. After all, a song is a crossing of the past, contemporary to the present, which passing, resonates, as it happens between verse and chorus, as something completely new,” he said.
“Harrison-Lavoie, who is the head of my label Monotreme Records… a more unique than rare person in the world of the music business, with a refined taste as much as her manners of being with me; Alessandro Ceccarelli who follows me in the live part and with whom I shared almost twenty years of live music.”
“My girlfriend Letizia who plays with me and lives with me with our cats Eco and Nuba.”
“… and Franco Naddei, who is the sound engineer: he record the songs as I want, and it’s not so common. I love closing my eyes and feeling the landscape stretch in intensity: it’s one of my greatest inspirations.”
Evidently, it is the people around him that show Michele the humanity that he so desperately aims to be reflected in his music.
A Struggle for Success
While Michele claims he hasn’t received too much criticism of his art, he certainly hasn’t gone without hardships on his road to inner peace.
He told us, “the only thing that made me suffer is that I was almost isolated during the pandemic. I found myself like an abandoned pen on the table.”
“In general, I often have to explain what I do as if it were not a job or something absolutely useless. Sometimes I felt guilty. I worked a lot on myself to continue doing what makes me alive hoping to find resonances with others. I’m a devotee, nothing more.”
Although the pandemic was particularly rough for him, it wasn’t the only prolonged period that he found himself struggling to move himself forward. Physical, mental and health issues have also caused difficult roadblocks for the artist.
“I found myself in some very difficult times,” he begun.
“I had four broken ribs and a perforated lung, so I had to deal with psychiatry. The rather dramatic thing is that the part that should take care of psychic suffering often only thinks of having to fix a piece of brain with medicines. There is no life that resonates with life, but only a brain that holds together hallucinations. We are the world, not the brain.”
“In my small and trivial experience I found myself having to do treatment where doctors gave me random medicines and without utility. The last time I was in a mental health centre they mistook me for a doctor, then they let me in as a patient marking that I was an ok person since I didn’t have drool coming out of my mouth. I’ve always been saved by the fact that I really think that everything, every person, including me, is a song,” he told us.
Evidently, it is his music that stops Michele from giving up. It drives him, gives him a motive and empowers him every day to do better.
Holding Value in his Life of Beauty
It’s easy to discern that Michele is an artist with a deep-seeded drive for honesty and sincerity within his works – and this is reflected in the ways he leads his own life.
Talking about his online presence, he told us, “I use social media but I’m not lived or absorbed by them. The only thing I like is that they are like an immense memory independent of our brains.”
“However, I have a policy even with my record label to make a virtue out of necessity without ever using sponsorships or other strange things. I record album on tape in a few days and with little money because for me it becomes important and fundamental to make music that does not remember the steroids and the exaggeration of the capitalist world’s way of doing things. It is something that also the ‘alternative’ world of art must also begin to take into consideration: keeping on the horizon who we are: migrants,” he explained.
As far as having musical idols goes, Michele believes it’s essential to being a good artist yourself. “Kim Harrison-Lavoie is one of these people. Without her I wouldn’t have been able to dream a dream that had to be lived to dream again,” he shared.
Everyone needs a little something more to their than their career, of course. Outside of producing his music, Michele describes his personal hobbies to be akin to a flood. “There are no separate things but each wave has its own nuance. I read a lot, lot, lot, from poetry to literature to philosophy. I love cinema and painting with watercolors,” he said.
Comically, he also added, “I am happily a slave to my girlfriend and my cats”.
While Michele has already been lucky enough to have made a career out of his passions, he understands that not everybody has had that opportunity. He believes everybody has the option, however, sharing that keen artists should, “Always remain faithful to the intuition that made us start doing everything we do. Always keep that as a compass.”
“Whether it’s an architect, a musician, a scientist: while we fix the pieces, arrange, decorate, we must always keep up with the creative emotion from which the instance of making began. She is the one who colours everything, like the emotion that can inflame a soul and occupy everything. Keeping, basically, childhood on the horizon and never in the past,” he described.
When asked what his biggest challenge in life has been so far, he said simply, “to be in love”.
Stories Yet Untold: What’s Next for the Artist?
For Michele Ducci, there’s a whole novella of pages left unturned. “NUBA Live Tape” has only just released, but that hasn’t stopped the artist from pacing forward to the next project. He exclusively shared with us; “I’m working on some things that seem like the beginning of a new album. I think I’ll start working on it towards spring.”
Not only is new music on the way, but Michele feels ready to share his music with the world in-person too, going on to say “I’m putting on a live show and I’m around, playing. On January 31st, I will be at the Bronson Club in Ravenna in Italy and then we will go around the world a bit.”
Written by Student Journalist: Jayden Robinson [The force is strong with this one]!
