Davide Ragazzoni was born in Venice on May 24, 1958. He came up in the Veneto region's active jazz scene of the early 1980s, playing alongside alto saxophonist Massimo Urbani and, with bassist Bicio Caldura, co-founding the group Jazz Forms; his own biography also places him working alongside "the Tonolo brothers" (pianist Marcello Tonolo and saxophonist Pietro Tonolo), among other Venetian musicians who went on to prominent jazz careers of their own.

His discography opens with the same regional scene: an early sideman date on the 1990 Jazzis Records release Life in Israel by the Roberto Magris Israsextet, led by the Trieste-born pianist Roberto Magris. Three years later, Ragazzoni was the drummer of record for Lee Konitz e Il Suono Improvviso a Venezia (Philology, 1993), recorded at Farm Digital Studio in Cessalto in March 1993 - a large-ensemble session, led by saxophonist Giannantonio De Vincenzo's Venice-based ensemble Il Suono Improvviso, that featured Lee Konitz as guest soloist on alto and soprano saxophone alongside a personnel of roughly two dozen musicians.

The longest and most thoroughly documented thread in his discography is a two-decade partnership with trumpeter and philosopher Massimo Donà, another Venice native. Donà - a professor of theoretical philosophy who kept performing while teaching - led a series of Caligola Records albums under various billings (Sextet, Quintet, Quartet, Trio, Ensemble, and eventually under his own name alone) on which Ragazzoni played drums on every one confirmed for this profile: New Rhapsody in Blue (A Tribute to New York) (2002), For Miles and Miles (2003), Re-Collage (2004, co-billed with former Van der Graaf Generator saxophonist David Jackson and keyboardist Tony Pagliuca), Spritz (2004), Cose dell'Altro Mondo (2006), Big Bum (I Ritmi della Creazione) (2009), Il Santo che Vola (2016), Iperboliche Distanze (Le Parole di Andrea Emo) (2020), Magister Puck (2021), and Frammentità (2022). The last three form a trilogy setting philosophical texts and poetry to music, with lyrics by Carlo Invernizzi; by outside accounts, Ragazzoni became Donà's steady, "historic" drumming partner across this run, appearing on effectively every track of the later albums alongside saxophonist Michele Polga. In 2007 he also drummed on Night Over (Caligola), a Thelonious Monk tribute credited to pianist Marcello Tonolo and a reassembled Thelonious Monk Big Band.

In 2010, Ragazzoni made his only outing as a billed leader: Drumprints - Drums & Percussion (Caligola), a duo record with percussionist Leo Di Angilla, recorded live to preserve the character of the pair's concert and lecture-concert performances of the previous two years. Discogs tags the album Jazz, Latin, and Funk/Soul, and it draws on Latin, African, Brazilian, and Mediterranean percussion traditions alongside bebop and fusion drumming vocabulary. In 2018 he added a further international credit, playing drums on "I Told You So," one track from keyboardist Adam Holzman's jazz-rock album Truth Decay (Big Fun Productions) - Holzman having recorded and toured with Miles Davis in the 1980s and later worked in Steven Wilson's band.

Alongside this jazz throughline, Ragazzoni has built an equally long career as a touring and recording drummer in Italian popular and singer-songwriter music: with singer Patty Pravo (Oltre l'Eden..., 1989), actor-writer David Riondino, guitarist Andrea Braido (for whom he also produced 1996's Le Bizzarre Avventure del Dottor Kranius), singer-songwriter Claudio Lolli, Portuguese fado singer Teresa Salgueiro, and - his longest-running such relationship - folk singer-songwriter Angelo Branduardi, with whom he has recorded and toured Europe's theaters since around 1996, including the award-winning L'Infinitamente Piccolo (2000) and further studio and live releases through 2013. He has also recorded and toured with Enzo Jannacci's band under the direction of Jannacci's son, pianist and composer Paolo Jannacci.

Ragazzoni teaches drums in the jazz departments of two Italian conservatories, the Antonio Buzzolla State Conservatory in Adria and the Francesco Cilea Conservatory of Music in Reggio Calabria, and continues to perform in small-group jazz settings, including a working trio documented in a 2017 concert at the Cilea Conservatory with pianist Paolo Passalacqua and electric bassist Giuseppe Pipitone. He writes for specialized drumming and music publications and endorses Ludwig drums, Remo drumheads, Vic Firth sticks, and Paiste cymbals and gongs, the last an endorsement dating to March 1997.

Ragazzoni's discography reads as the working record of a versatile Venetian jazz drummer rather than a single stylistic signature: hard-bop-descended small-group jazz (Roberto Magris), a large jazz-ensemble frame built around a visiting American cool-jazz legend (Lee Konitz), a big-band Monk tribute (Marcello Tonolo), and, at the center of his catalog, two decades inside trumpeter Massimo Donà's more exploratory, text- and poetry-driven "jazz trio" and ensemble projects, where drums, saxophone, and spoken or sung word share the frame in equal measure. His own leader date, Drumprints, moves furthest from straight-ahead jazz into duo percussion writing built on Latin, African, Brazilian, and Mediterranean rhythm traditions layered with bebop and fusion drumming, an idiom he has also carried into "lezioni-concerto" (lecture-concert) teaching performances. Running underneath all of it is a long, separate career as a first-call drummer in Italian popular and cantautore (singer-songwriter) music, most durably with Angelo Branduardi, which has kept him working in folk-inflected, largely acoustic settings quite apart from his jazz credits.