Biography
Davide Campisi is a Sicilian percussionist and singer-songwriter, among the youngest interpreters of frame drums from the popular musical tradition of Southern Italy. Born in Catania on 16 November 1978, he started playing drums at sixteen and since 1998 has been carrying out field research on ancient Sicilian cunti (oral storytelling), which led to the audio project "Cuccurucuntu". From 2002 he studied the rhythmic instruments of the southern tradition, in particular frame drums, developing his own contemporary voice on the ancestral rhythms of the Mediterranean and world music.
In 1999 he was among the founders of the ethnic music group "I Petri Ca Addumunu", devoted to the Sicilian and Mediterranean folk repertoire. He then began a solo path bringing into squares and theaters projects such as "BADR" (2015), with which he reached the top eight finalists out of 1,500 participants in the May Day concert contest in Rome, and the album "Democratica" (2017), a finalist at the Premio Andrea Parodi.
In 2018 he won the award for best solo percussionist at the "1000 beats innovation lab" festival of the European Drum & Percussion Academy and took part in the International Percussion Festival "Gongs & Skins" in Myanmar. In 2020 he released with guitarist and singer-songwriter Mimì Sterrantino the album "Mircanti", which brought the duo on a tour of over fifty dates across Italy. In 2021 he released the solo album "JOCA", weaving drums, nursery rhymes and electronics. The partnership with Sterrantino continued in 2024 with "Dù", released on 19 March for Comusì with the artistic production of Ottavio Leo: an album that pushes their distinctive sound toward electronic contaminations between folk, indie and southern roots.
He has been teaching frame drum since 2005, sometimes integrating the practice with theater and dance. He has collaborated with leading Italian musicians and with Salvo Compagno in the project "Battiti e respiri", which brings the percussion of Southern Italy into dialogue with the sounds of the global south, from Africa to India and Latin America.
