Dan Pugach: Can Drummers be Composers?

Drummers: we all love them.  They’re the cool women and men who are always relaxed, funny and consummately professional.  When it comes to ensemble music, whether we make the effort to notice drummers’ playing, or not, drummers are the ones who make a group sparkle and its music take flight.  So, it’s no surprise that every record producer puts the drum track right up front with the vocal track.  But therein lies the big question: can drummers be composers?  Our Western preconception of meaningful music is that it sings, an aesthetic hardly associated with drumming.  Drummer Dan Pugach has had a deeply personal struggle with that question and comes on our show to report that, yes, drummers can be composers and even become GRAMMY-nominated composers.  Let’s welcome Dan Pugach, drummer & composer, to our show, and he will show us how the outsider perspective of drummers makes for an even better composer.

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