Who was Daniel Sahad? Tributes pour in as lead singer of Austin band Nané dies aged 29

Daniel Sahad, the lead singer of the Austin band Nané, passed away on April 10 at the age of 29. The band posted the news of his death on Instagram on April 11 and wrote,

“It is with unbelievable pain that we have to share our beautiful leader, Daniel Sahad, passed away last night. Please give his family and friends the space they need to process this tragedy. Thank you all.”

The artist’s death comes three days after the band played at City Hall during an intermission in last week’s Austin City Council meeting. The Austin Economic Development Corporation named April 7 as Nané Day in Austin. The band was preparing for several spring and summer concerts, including a slot at Float Fest in Gonzales.

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Commenting on Sahad’s death, Austin Mayor Steve Adler said,

“City Council was excited to have live music back in chambers last week for the first time since before the pandemic, and Nane was a great choice. This is very sad news. Our thoughts go out to Daniel’s family and the band today.”

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Everything known about Daniel Sahad

Daniel Sahad's cause of death remains unknown until now (Image via Rick Kern/Getty Images)

Daniel Sahad was the leader of the Austin-based pop-rock band Nané. He was also active on Instagram with around 4000 followers and called himself a creative director, digital ad strategist, and musician.

His parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic before his birth and he grew up in Amarillo. He shifted to Austin to attend school at the University of Texas.

Sahad and guitarist Ian Green formed Nané as a cover band at UT Austin in 2016. The band’s website says that the duo started writing original songs and the group released its debut self-titled full-length album during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, a 10-track LP engineered by Adrian Quesada of Black Pumas. While speaking to the American Songwriter in late 2020, Sahad said,

“When I was writing, the stories that were coming to me were about a college student becoming a young adult. It’s a lot of love and loss and feelings of insecurity, confidence, and misplaced confidence. This album is taking ownership of what you want to become and what needs to be done. I’ve always been one who pushes for more and more of himself and tries to inspire the same out of his peers.”

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The band was later joined by bass player Scott McIntyre and started writing their debut album alongside performing with Dayglow drummer Brady Knippa and Black Pumas keyboardist JaRon Marshall.

Nané soon became famous and played a series of sold-out shows in front of the shimmering curtains of Stay Gold. They headlined in front of around 1,000 people and opened shows for Black Pumas, Bob Schneider, Eric Tessmer, and Sir Woman, in their first year itself.

They even spent time in the studio recording their debut record with Grammy award-winning drummer John Speice IV in production and Adrian Quesada of the Black Pumas in engineering and mixing.

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Netizens pay tribute on Twitter

Daniel Sahad was mostly known to everyone as the lead member of the band Nané. Twitter was flooded with tributes when people heard the news of his death.

So far, there are no known survivors of Sahad. Further details related to his personal life are yet to be revealed.