Something So Much Better
When asked how I first became interested in such an unusual instrument, I used to shrug and say, “I wish it were more romantic, but it was YouTube.”
Others spoke of stumbling across a street musician in a town square, of hearing one in a ceremony, even beneath the echoing arches of a cathedral. My story? Just a hyperlink, clicked in my pajamas.
But as the years unfolded, that story changed. What began with a screen and a pair of pj’s became something I carried in my own hands, and eventually, in my heart. Each passing year seemed to lend its weight, until my unremarkable beginning became a story worth retelling.
And then, suddenly, it all gave way to tragedy.
This is the story of someone I was lucky enough to call my friend.
This is my story of Dante Bucci.
I first discovered the instrument while I was in college. A friend sent me a link to a new website called YouTube. The novelty of it—the idea that he could share a moving picture with sound at the click of a button—was reason enough to be curious. I turned up my speakers and pressed play.
The next thing I knew, afternoon light was slipping away. I’d missed all my classes—even forgotten to eat.
That first video wasn’t the highest quality, nor the finest example of the instrument. But it opened a door. And it was the second video—the one that followed—that showed me what it truly meant to play. It was a young man named Dante Bucci.
From that point on, my path with the instrument unfolded in ways that were witnessed, recorded, and retold. But in the telling, I often left Dante out. Not because he was undeserving—far from it—but because he was gone, and I wasn’t ready to admit it.
Handpan.org was the gathering place for these instruments online for the better part of a decade. The forum hummed with lively, informative discussions: updates from makers, shared recordings, even the occasional DIY attempt at crafting one from woks.
I was an avid member and found real camaraderie within those pages.
And then, one day, a new member appeared. Username: dante.
Could it be? The Dante?
His first post was titled “Sphongle Gig.” I wasn’t much of a Sphongle fan, but the title struck a faint bell in my memory—not about Dante, but about Manu Delago.
At that time, Manu was Dante’s European contemporary. Both had stepped into the handpan world in its earliest days, both blazing trails in their own corners of the globe. I remembered a video of Manu performing with Sphongle: a luminous melody soaring before thousands, one of the first wide-open exposures of the instrument.
But why was Dante posting about it?
I read on. Sphongle was planning a U.S. performance and had invited Manu, but he wasn’t available. So they’d asked Dante instead. The only catch: Dante didn’t know what scale Manu had been playing in that famous video.
But I did. For reasons I couldn’t quite recall, I’d once learned and tucked it away: a Bb Mixolydian with F at the center.
So I typed it out: F / Bb C D Eb F G Ab Bb.
And Dante replied with his thanks.
Did I—just—advise Dante Bucci?
It felt like a full-circle moment. From inspiration to advisement—how far I’d come from my dorm room.
Months later, at the first U.S. handpan gathering in North Carolina, I woke late, jet-lagged. I’d been one of the lucky few to claim a bed, and in no hurry to leave it.
Then I heard it.
A familiar melody—one that shouldn’t have been there. It was the Sphongle melody.
Was someone playing a video? No—the sound was live.
Was Manu here? Impossible.
Curiosity got the better of me. I stepped out of my room and peered over the balcony.
Below me sat Dante Bucci, playing Manu’s melody on a brand-new handpan.
Since our brief exchange on the forum, he’d had an instrument crafted in the scale I’d recommended—and he had mastered the Sphongle solo.
Right there before my very eyes. And my ears.
That night he performed, playing his YouTube hits—even the one I’d first heard. He mentioned he’d just had his instruments tuned, joking that it was the first time he’d played those songs in tune in a long while.
And then he premiered a new song, on his new instrument—Flageolet.
In four and a half minutes, he cemented his place as one of the all-time greats.
Our very own Captain America.
A year slipped by. A clip of Dante performing with Sphongle had surfaced online, and once again, it was time to gather.
A few weeks before the event, an email arrived from the organizers:
“Dante suggested maybe the two of you teaming up to share some techniques—what do you think?”
Did I read that correctly?
I’d been running technique workshops at festivals for a few years, but the idea of leading one with him—the person whose music had started it all for me—felt almost unreal.
While I didn’t (and still don’t) consider myself Dante’s equal, I suddenly found myself his peer. His invitation to collaborate felt like a quiet acknowledgment, a gesture of recognition.
And so, together, we ran a workshop—moving from simple patterns and ambidexterity drills to the tangled beauty of odd-meter rhythms and the complications of isolating harmonics. Between demonstrations we laughed, shared anecdotes, and filled the room with that rare feeling of shared discovery.
To sit side by side with a hero, trading stories, was something I could never have imagined. What I learned that day was that not only was he truly a great, he was, in fact, truly great.
And then came a request I didn’t expect:
“How would you feel if I wanted to come for a visit and have you show me some things about tuning?”
And so he did. He stayed in my home and came to my workshop with me.
For a week, we worked through the basics. We sunk a 55-gallon barrel with the goal of making something he could take home to practice on. We tuned a few notes and left the others untouched—a blank canvas for him to explore on his own. I made him a tuning hammer, just like mine, and signed it for him.
We even put on a house concert, where he sold copies of his yet-to-be-released album, Kinesthesia.
He performed with natural grace—music that was complex and demanding, yet it flowed through him effortlessly. I sat in the back of that concert, watching my local community take it in, unaware that they were listening to our very own Yo-Yo Ma. But I knew. I knew we were witnessing greatness.
When I introduced him to the audience, I said:
“Please welcome an amazing musician, a fellow handpan enthusiast, and my friend—Dante Bucci.”
From inspiration, to peer, to friend.
That’s the story I wanted to tell. Not that I saw something strange on YouTube, but that I befriended a giant.
And for a few years, that was my story—one I was proud to tell, one I romanticized the hell out of.
A year later, I saw Dante for the last time. One last sweet moment with my friend.
We had once again returned to North Carolina for our annual pilgrimage. This time, I wasn’t performing or teaching a workshop—I was retuning. I had gained the skills and was offering my services.
I spent most of the event in a basement, headphones on, hammer in hand. After long days of tuning, my ears were too spent to enjoy sitting through the evening of concerts.
I know Dante performed—and I’m sure it was his best showing yet—but I didn’t hear it. What I did have was a private moment after his performance that I’ll cherish forever.
I had brought along a handpan I’d made—my very first—and he asked if he could play it. While the rest of the attendees sat upstairs listening to the next performer, I sat quietly, listening to a performance that was mine alone.
Dante—my friend, my inspiration, my brother in steel—played just for me.
Over a decade later, I can still hear him.
I can still see his hands move, his hair gently falling into his eyes as he made the steel sing—the same steel that my hands had crafted.
And then the moment ended. He was needed elsewhere, as was I.
We hugged, said “see you later,” and went our separate ways.
That was the last time I saw my friend Dante.
A year later, he passed—tragically and unexpectedly. The news sent shock waves through our community. He was gone, and he was just getting started. There was so much runway still ahead of him.
His passing, and the grief that followed, have taken years to process. The opportunity to do so has come in quiet, unexpected ways.
By chance, I visited Pantheon Steel a few months after his death, and during that visit, we made his urn.
Crafters of steel, we did what we knew best—we shaped his final resting place through hammer and tuning. It had space for a single note. When the question was raised as to which note it should be, there was only one right answer: D — for Dante.
Even in death, he inspired. His urn wasn’t just a vessel—it was an invitation, a quiet call to join him for a moment of music. One last time to play with him.
As the years passed, his instruments needed tuning—and I got the call. I remember opening the shipping box, and there it was: the instrument that had first inspired me, the one that kept me from attending my classes that day so long ago. Now it was here, in front of me.
While he wasn’t there, his music was. Sitting in my lap was a portal back to my friend; all I had to do was find his melodies to step through.
It’s been like that ever since. Every few years, Dante comes to visit through his instruments. And each time, I feel a little closer to communing with him.
I just wish he hadn’t been such a damn good musician—his songs are so impossibly complicated.
I often catch myself wishing I could simply ask him for help, but my only way of reaching him is through the very thing I need help with.
I shake a fist and shout, “Damn you, Dante—I’ll get it right next time.”
It would take a lifetime to master the music he made in his short time with us.
A year after his death, I found myself feeling his loss all over again. My career had continued, and I had returned to North Carolina once more—his absence felt by everyone in attendance.
When I returned from the East Coast, my wife noticed my melancholy and offered a perspective that quietly shifted my grief. She had realized that the night Dante passed was the same night we conceived our first child. We hadn’t known it at the time, of course, but when she later did the math, the dates aligned.
“I like to think that they met in passing,” she said. “One leaving, the other arriving—and maybe they shared a brief moment.”
I like to think that’s true. That he, even in leaving, had the chance to touch one more life.
I had wished for a founding story that was more romantic—and I got something so much better.
So now, when people ask how I first became interested in such an unusual instrument, I no longer shrug and say, “YouTube.”
My answer?
Let me tell you about my friend Dante.
