San Francisco, CA native, DJ rSphere, aka Daniel Newman, is currently working on two independent projects featuring artists Hafez Modirzedeh and Sanaz Ebriani.
At the age of 6, on the set of his father's film production "Space is the Place", a 1972 film starring renowned jazz musician Sun Ra, Daniel got his first exposure to the cosmology and impact of African music. This early experience of polyrhythmic pulse unified with Sci-Fi and ancient Egyptian underpinnings would create the groundwork for Daniel’s future evolution as a musician and producer of unique sensibility. A guitarist, bass player, dj, and percussionist, Daniel is an artist who seeks to balance the forces of many potent world styles (Tropicalismo, Gnawa, Malian-Guitar – Afro-Beat) without sacrificing idiomatic impact, and the quintessence of original composition. Daniel’s guitar playing and compositional approach are derived from his study of Ghanaian drumming with masters, Abraham Adzenya and Freeman Donkor. Every element in his music is subtle and powerful for its relationship to the whole. With a deep love of hip hop dating back to his collaborations with Bay Area artists (Midnight Voices, the Coup, and members of the Hieroglyphics) in the early nineties, Daniel has evolved a production style that honors the deepest methods of creating ‘phatness’ – sound structures that thunder on the dance floor while maintaining subtle and elegant globally-resonant harmonies.