Daniel He

Daniel He sings of loss, identity, and life between worlds. In the spring of 2021, then 20-year-old architecture student Daniel He received a phone call from Wuhan. The news was a shock: his mother had passed away following a vascular rupture. Traveling to her funeral in Wuhan? Impossible – the world was still in the grip of the pandemic. A day after receiving the heartbreaking news, Daniel picked up his guitar and began writing songs: "Come on, let’s quit this silly game" – stop playing these games, this can’t be real. From that moment on, this theme would shape Daniel’s life. He read through his mother's old diaries and realized just how similar they were. "I am undoubtedly her son," he thought. Daniel writes in English – the language of his musical upbringing. From an early age, he had absorbed the sounds of Joni Mitchell and Elliott Smith. His quiet, open-tuned guitar songs are reminiscent of Nick Drake, with clear influences from the Anglophone music world – yet Daniel adds something entirely his own: a subtle, distinct Chinese note.