When Lee Zangari was going through a rough patch in college, their parents decided to cheer them up with a ... mountain dulcimer? Turns out the esoteric gift was just the ticket to launch Zangari on a solo career. Read more about our local Tiny Desk pick:
What are the ingredients to a good song? Like a homemade tomato sauce, best not to overcomplicate it. A simple chord progression; a singable melody; a touch of dissonance, but not too much. A bridge that isn’t trying too hard. A refrain that deepens the longer you listen.
You heard it here first: Lee Zangari's"A Man Is A Man" is WBUR’s Favorite Massachusetts Entry to NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. One of the panelists called the song “patient,” and I can’t think of a better description. It enters quietly, but stays with you. As for the mountain dulcimer? It helps to start the story in childhood. Zangari grew up in a musical household in Hingham: their dad, Joe Micarelli, is a jazz pianist and music teacher. Zangari started singing at an early age, occasionally joining Micarelli onstage during his regular jazz brunch gig.
“That’s very my dad,” Zangari said of the unconventional gift, and the underlying assumption that an instrument could offer a reprieve from heartbreak. But it worked. Zangari found the simplicity of the dulcimer – and, perhaps more importantly, its foreignness – freeing. “I had a lot of hang-ups, like, ‘I can’t play an instrument. I’ll be bad at it,’ ” they said. “And I didn’t know what it would be to be bad at the dulcimer because I didn’t know what it would be to be good at it.
The gender thing: It’s impossible to avoid completely. Zangari has been using they/them pronouns since college, but only recently started performing as Lee Zangari, instead of their given name, Noelle Micarelli.