From Gurus to Tacos: Indie Violinist Daniel Hart

Daniel Hart first put bow to strings at the age of three, and was classically trained for years, before travelling to India to learn from a master. Now he has turned his swelling notes toward the indie pop world for artists like St. Vincent and his own solo debut, "The Orientalist", from which he’ll draw heavily upon during his August 26 performance at Yugong Yishan.

But all that high class training and experience couldn’t prepare him for the worst gig of his life, performing at a Las Vegas taco shop with a high school band.

“We played a last minute show for donations,” Hart tells the Beijinger. “But a bunch of drunks put together a beer pong game in the back of the taco shop, proceeding to heckle us while we set up.”

Just when things couldn’t have gotten any worse, Hart had a moment of enlightenment—the kind that would have made his Hindu mentor proud. Before long the rotten gig became the best of his career.

Below, Hart gives us the details on that show, his guru tutelage, and his secret for keeping the zing in violin strings.

How did you turn things around at the taco shop?

When we started playing everyone stopped what they were doing. From out of nowhere, 30 more people appeared. And when we finished playing, we sold more t-shirts that night than any other on the tour. And one of those t-shirts went to one of the main hecklers.

But you’re used to playing more professional venues with the likes of St. Vincent.

One of my favorite St. Vincent things was playing the JUE Festival in Beijing and Shanghai.There were so many people at those shows, and it had never occurred to me before we played in Beijing that China would be as fantastic a place to tour as it is.

What did you learn from your pilgrimage to India?

My instructor taught me how to play the sarangi. It’s the same size as the violin, but its body is rectangular.

Are there any other differences?

How it’s played— the finger presses up against the string just below the nail, around the cuticle, which is very soft and sensitive. At my first sarangi lesson, I played for about twenty minutes until most of the skin on my fingers was worn off, and they started to bleed. So my sarangi teacher gave me some ripped up cloth to tie around my fingers, so that I could keep playing. After another ten minutes of playing, I was bleeding through the cloth as well, so he finally told me I could stop playing.

Now that’s dedication.

Yeah. And I did practice classical violin as a teenager for hours a day. I am grateful for the teachers I had who encouraged me to practice etudes and scales and arpeggios, because they are the backbone of everything I do now. They gave me a vocabulary to communicate with, so that I could then learn other dialects, or even other languages, on the violin.

Daniel Hart will perform at Yugong Yishan on Aug. 26 at 9pm, sharing the bill with PS I Love You, Residence A and DJ-Dave Van Buuren. RMB 120, RMB 100 (advance). For more information visit Yugongyishan.com.