Danny Shamoun

Hailing from Detroit, music producer and instrumentalist Danny Shamoun blends his Middle Eastern roots into Mesopotamian house music and ethereal meditation soundscapes. Trained in Near Eastern classical music under Dr. A. J. Racy at UCLA, Danny has recorded and toured with System of a Down and Scars on Broadway, and his 2020 meditative piece "Deep Thoughts" has surpassed 12 million streams.

In this conversation, Danny traces his journey from a kid drumming on his teeth to fall asleep, to discovering the ney — a reed flute so difficult that 99% of people who try never make a sound. He opens up about the state of pure nothingness he enters when performing, how ancestral frequencies may be encoded in our DNA, and a transformative sound meditation that left him reborn as an artist.

Along the way: stories of touring with System of a Down, meeting Robert Plant in a backyard, the cosmic poetry of Omar Khayyam, and why the best memories are the ones you never filmed.

This is one for the music heads! Thank you Danny!