A Wanderer, A Wonderer: Dani Hart Finds Her Sound Between Chile and Barcelona
From Chile to London, Belgium and now Barcelona, Dani Hart has followed music, love and a restless curiosity wherever they’ve led. Along the way, she’s found herself on stages where thousands of strangers sing back songs they’ve never heard before — and discovered that perhaps the wandering was always part of the story.
“Home is where the heart is.”
For Dani Hart, it’s not a cliché so much as a map.
The Chilean-born artist has built a life across borders: London, drawn by music; Belgium, drawn by love; and now Barcelona, where she says she has arrived for something perhaps even more important — “self-love.”
“A wanderer. A wonderer,” she calls herself.
It’s an apt description for an artist whose musical journey seems to have been in motion almost from the moment she could speak.
Legend has it that at six months old, Hart was already singing vowels. By one, she was producing what she jokingly describes as “baby bangers” such as Tutu Tata, while simultaneously attacking an acoustic guitar. By her final year of high school, she was taking the rebellion one step further, playing guitar during mathematics exams.
“But, profe, why bother? I’m gonna study music.”
And she did.
Her life since has taken her far beyond the classroom — and far beyond Chile.
Hart has travelled through Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, the UK, Scotland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden and Iceland, among other destinations. Yet for all her South American roots, she admits that part of her has always been drawn north.
“My soul has always belonged in the far north,” she says.
Her favourite city is Stockholm. Her description of herself there is pure Dani Hart: “The looks of a Latina. The soul of a Viking.”
She adds, with a wink, “Or so I like to delulu myself.”
That mixture of humour, wanderlust and unapologetic individuality also runs through her music.
Perhaps nowhere was that more evident than at Belgium’s Graspop Metal Meeting, one of the country’s biggest rock and metal festivals. Hart describes the experience almost cinematically: three consecutive 45-minute sets, an audience of around 1,500 people, and something every performer dreams of — strangers singing along.
There was just one catch.
They were singing songs they had never heard before.
“Belgians and people from all over the world singing along in unison to songs they’d never heard before… by some random Chilean woman from the other side of the world.”
The “random Chilean woman” was hardly alone. Hart was sharing the stage with musicians from the international touring circuit, many of whom she now counts among her closest friends.
It was one of those moments when geography suddenly becomes irrelevant. Chile, Belgium, Barcelona — the borders disappear, and what remains is a room full of people connected by sound.
Her musical influences are equally wide-ranging.
Ask Hart to name them and she immediately calls it “an evil question.”
There’s Lzzy Hale, Tina Turner, Aerosmith and Guns N’ Roses. Then Shawn James, Chris Stapleton, Suki Waterhouse and Leilani Kilgore. Some influences arrived when she was young, discovered while watching the Chilean music television channel Wurlitzer. Others came through friends — “and maybe a bit more than friends too.”
The joke is very Dani Hart. But beneath it is a serious point: her musical world has never been confined to one genre, country or scene.
It’s accumulated through places, people, friendships, love affairs, travel and years of listening.
Now, in Barcelona, another chapter is unfolding.
She describes her current quest simply: “beneath the sun, by the sea, among kindred spirits.”
It sounds less like a destination than a state of mind.
And perhaps that is the real thread running through Dani Hart’s story. She has travelled across countries, cities and musical landscapes, but she hasn’t necessarily been searching for one place to call home.
She’s been searching for the places, people and sounds that make her feel alive.
The wanderer keeps moving.
The wonderer keeps asking questions.
And the music keeps playing.
Follow Dani in all the usual places, play the video, send her flowers, but best of all: come to the 26th of September-- it will be quite a show.
Between Chile and Barcelona, we hope Dani Hart keeps choosing this side of the planet.
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