Michele Kappa | Drummer

Michele Koukoussis, aka Michele Kappa, born in 1976, after several attempts at playing different instruments (mainly guitar and piano) I found out to be a natural-born drummer at the age of 13, in my small hometown of Trikala, Greece, and started receiving drum lessons under the guidance and teachings of Christos Makris, drummer in the Philharmonic society of the city.

My first concerts as a drummer took place in 1990, playing classic rock covers with the band Sine Nomini; the band was renamed Ta Skulikia in which I started playing original songs for the first time. A tribute band to... the house of my infancy was born, called Ansen, for which I composed lyrics, music and played guitar and keyboards with guitarists and friends Ernestos Loukas and - now stand-up comedian - Aristotelis Rigas. The project was mainly improvised and a single concert was produced; the group was disbanded immediately after. The grunge-influenced Deranium band was born - with songs by Aristotelis, and a demotape was produced.

Graduated in 1993, I moved to Thessaloniki and studied Double Bass at the Kratiko Odeio Thessalonikis, Jazz guitar at the Sinchrono Odeio, as well as piano and theoretical music studies at the Makedoniko Odeio - meanwhile in my free time I played with the southern rock band Loudias, playing covers and original tunes.

In 1995 I moved from Greece to Pavia in Italy, where I played original songwriter songs with Sur, a 4-piece band, with whom I recorded a demotape at the SAE music studios in Milan. Moving to Bologna in 1997 to study Disciplines of Art, Music and Entertainment at the University of Bologna, I discovered radical improvisation at the Scuola Popolare di Musica Ivan Illich, in which I continued learning the drums and played in the school's big band under the guidance of Fabrizio Puglisi, and took several seminars of improvised music from musicians such as Eugene Chadbourne, Bob Moses, Edoardo Marraffa, Guglielmo Pagnozzi and many more. The Mitocondri collective was born, producing several shows in Bologna, on the crossroads between art, music, and performance, with the invaluable contribution of visual artist, open-source advocate and developer Jaromil.

After a short break, in 2008 I played shortly with the rock band Phidge, as well as the songwriter Andrea Piermattei, but mainly with the newly-born reggae group Travellers (video) and received drumming lessons from the ex-drummer of italian legendary reggae band Africa Unite, Alessandro Soresini (RIP).

Moving to Belgium in 2015 I started playing with the cover and original funky band The Bowtie Collective; returning to Italy in 2017 I started (and am currently) collaborating with the Bhutan Clan, a multi-instrumental collective specialised in the creative interplay between music and spoken word, mainly with the contributions of writers Wu Ming 1 (Wu Ming Foundation), writer Jadel Andreeto, as well as music composer Stefano D'Arcangelo, rapper Giroweedz and guitarist and writer Bruno Fiorini (Kai Zen).

Bhutan Clan & Wu Ming 1 are currently on tour with Radio Ufo 78, a Μελόλογος production, based on Wu Ming's latest book, Ufo 78.