This is the internet debut of that interview.
From 1967 until Jerry Garcia’s death in August of 1995, Mickey Hart played percussion with the Grateful Dead, in addition to regularly succumbing to an uncontrollable urge to uncover and bring to light music from all over the world. He recorded The Music Of Upper and Lower Egypt during a Dead tour in 1978 and has since cataloged and released music from every continent save Antarctica. He has worked and toured with the Gyuto Monks from Nepal, the Latvian Women’s Choir, Balinese gamelan orchestras, scores of African and Caribbean drummers and, most recently, Native American war veterans.
Through Rykodisc, Hart has released lost gems from the Library of Congress, archiving hidden ethno-musical wonders. As author of the book Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm, and its accompanying album of the same name, he delved into drumming and rhythm as a cultural, social, psychological and subliminal force.
We spoke about the Grateful Dead's legacy, the condition of global music, the death of Jerry Garcia, the Chemical Brothers, ethnocentrism, MIDI technology, World War II, Phish-heads and the meaning of life.
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Is it good to be back in your traveling drum circle?
Oh yeah! This is an exciting time. It’s an amazing moment in percussive history. It’s quite a bit different from last time, though the engine is the same. The songs are completely different — much more rhythm oriented. It’s a dance groove, really. The first Planet Drum was more of a concert kind of a thing, and this is more of a dance band with a bent toward the more esoteric electronic sounds.
So you’ve embraced industrial and techno music?
I’ve been into electronic music since the German industrial bands of the 60s. And I love the Chemical Brothers, Orb, all that kind of stuff. I’ve been following their illustrious careers. I have an instrument that contains all of my percussive samples, and we call it RAMU. RAMU is the centerpiece of this Planet Drum.
What exactly is a RAMU?
Random Access Music Universe. It’s a robot. It’s basically a sound droid. It’s part real drums and then there’s the digital parts, both in this contraption. It’s sort of a newfangled instrument.
And how many of those exist?
Well, one! There’s only one RAMU! I’ve been building it for years. But until the last year or two we didn’t have the sampling power to be able to really bring all these exotic sounds to the performing arena. We can in the studio, but in concert is another thing. That was the dream, and RAMU is the realization of that. Between these master percussionists and RAMU we have every continent in the percussive zone represented. We have a stage full of instruments — all we have to do is fall either way and we’ll make a sound! It’s quite an array. I like to think of us as a Delta Force.
"World music" seems more popular than ever now.
I’ve always looked at these musics of the people of the world as great creations, perhaps their greatest creation as a culture. Thousands of years of instrument making, thousands of years of learning to play, then taking the music and marrying it with the history of the culture ... it’s like a great art treasure, a Picasso or Renoit. But it’s sound. It represents what we as a species have accumulated, all the mythos, everything is in that sonic repository. Now people are starting to understand that this is an important thing. These are great treasures, and people are collecting them and listening to them and valuing them.
Do you see America’s musical ethnocentrism beginning to unravel?
It is. It was inevitable. As soon as we started presenting this music of the world, not in a brown paper wrapper but presenting it like you would a Grateful Dead record, with perfect liner notes and looking like the jewel that it is... Remember, in the old days this was second- and third-rate music.
You didn’t think that anything else aside from classical music from Europe was first-rate. That, of course, is not the case. There are great virtuosos all over the world in places you’ve never heard of playing music you’ve never heard of. Music permeates the whole planet, every culture. And people are starting to really understand the value of them now.
Until recently, Anglo music has just been viewed as being “smarter” somehow.
Exactly — and the rest was savage music. Race music, they called it. There were many words for it, but it was never thought of as “the best.” Whenever you said “ethnic” or “folk” music it always sounded lesser. For 200 or 300 years it was this white art music from Europe and every other culture sort of suffered under this imperialism. That’s what really happened — and then the church did the rest.
For a long time, Westerners considered ethnic music too weird.
Well, when we say weird, remember that these observations about world music were made by anthropologists, and they reported with a certain kind of bias. Some of these savage, primitive tribes were among the most cultivated and spiritual on the planet. But through the eyes of a white anthropologist, all that was written was a savage, primitive take on it. It was people who knew nothing about the music but reported on it anyway. So it took years and years to be able to be a legitimate player in the soundscape of the world.
And now things have turned around a great deal — like food, sometimes it’s the otherness of these world musics that makes them interesting to us. We’re searching for something different.
Well, it’s a spiritual thing. What people are looking for in the music is that “hit,” that energy that takes them over the line, that gets them high. That’s what sacred music is all about. A lot of music that existed before entertainment was used for rituals that had to do with prayer or blessings or something to do with a higher priority ... a trance-dance kind of thing. People are looking for that, and with a lot of indigenous music, that’s at the very core. That’s what makes it so valuable. It is like food — music is one of those things you can look at like a meal. You sample all the world’s music as you would the food of the world. It’s a nourishment. And there’s a lot of bad music that was recorded as well. Now everyone’s getting in on this world music craze, and there are archives being released that are just terrible. Just because it’s indigenous doesn’t mean it’s good! There’s bad music out there just like there is here.
The American Warriors: Songs for Indian Veterans project you just released mentions that the Navajo language was used as a secret code during World War II, a code never cracked by the Japanese. I was in the Four Corners area near Monument Valley a few years ago, and I picked up a Navajo radio station out in the desert. When I first heard it, the speech and the singing sounded like they could be from another planet.
Well, it’s supposed to take you to another planet. That’s what it’s for. It’s for transcendence, travel, time and space. These are powerful songs and the energies are scary, so it’s not really conducive to an easy listening experience the first time you hear it. You have to really listen to it, and listen deep inside of it until it reveals itself to you. It seems like American Indian music is some of the most powerful on the planet.
What’s the latest on your Endangered Music Project?
We’re about to release three new albums from the Library of Congress. They house over 50,000 recordings around the world. A lot of these are from cultures that no longer exist or have been on the way out, so this project unearths those musics and brings them into the digital domain. We go back and find the field notes, the stories of how the music was first found and the people who recorded them and so on. They’re great stories — mysteries, adventures, romance ... so to me, this archival stuff is a great passion of mine. Some document the origins of this music — pre World War II music from the African Diaspora in the 1930s, before the war just upset the whole sonic ecology of the world. War really does not help indigenous music.
At music festivals, like the HORDE Fest in Denver last weekend, informal drum circles are more prevalent than ever.
It’s an old way to communicate. It was great 10,000 years ago and it’s great now. It’s something that’s certainly a very powerful ritual. You don’t have to know how to drum, either. The art of drumming is not really about that, it’s about locking together in rhythm and sharing a simple sound.
Playing in a drum circle seems to trigger a response...
Of course. That’s where it’s headed, that’s where it comes from. Once they make that connection, that’s the sound yoga. That’s what it’s all about. Connecting with your subconscious, finding out who you really are, what you really sound like, and creating something of your own for that day and that day only. It’ll never be the same. It’s a wonderful unique ability to take something from nothing and build it in sound. Then it’s there and it’s powerful and then all of a sudden, it goes. But you’re better for it after it’s done. It’s an interesting phenomenon.
You find most of this music and present it mostly undiluted — how do you view someone like Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel who take the same influences and weave them into their existing structures?
All the controversy, all the stuff that goes around it, who owns it, whatever — that’s all details. The music progresses as it changes and adapts, it mutates and becomes a hybrid: it fuses. All of that is good for music eventually, because music should be able to transcend all that — race, gender, geography — it has to do with the soul. When the music has no more need for the community, the community does not need that music. That music will die. It will become irrelevant. So when people like Peter Gabriel or the Beastie Boys, whomever, gets turned on these more esoteric styles and use them in their music, it’s usually for the betterment of the music as a whole. I asked His Holiness a few weeks ago about the sound of the monks — there’s been a lot of controversy about people taking the sacred sounds off their records and using them. He said that “whoever hears the sound will be better for it.” Even if you don’t know the dharma, don’t know the words, the Buddhist teachings are still there. If this is a holy sound made by a holy man, the ear — even though it doesn’t know what it’s hearing — somehow will be better for it.
You're willing to sample sounds digitally — though some feel that diminishes music’s organic spirit.
Poppycock! Who says that? What gives them the right to make any kind of boundary line on art? I say poppycock! (laughs) It’s the effect that it has on the people who listen to it that’s the real value and how they participate in it. I honor the old rhythms, and I practice them on a daily basis, but I also have one foot in the digital domain. I live in a very unique time in history where I have one foot in the archaic world and one foot firmly placed in the digital one. I love to process things. I love space. But I also love the sound of an acoustic drum. Usually, my synthesis comes from an acoustic source so I have a very specific priority in mind.
But I don’t think anybody can really draw the line on great art — that’s sort of a pompous attitude to take. Some people mix the acoustic world and the digital world with what I consider very bad taste, but that’s me personally. You can’t say the digital domain “grays out” music. We’re just learning to play with computers. And the opportunities, the colors available to us in the digital domain ... it makes my heart just jump right out of my chest! The possibilities that you can have with electronics, with MIDI, with synthesis ... you can be in the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, or you could be in Bali with a gamelan orchestra or at sea in a raging storm or you can be anyplace with this technology! A musician who’s exploring these realms is living in a golden age.
There’s always closed minds around when new tools are invented.
That’s right. You can read back through history, there’s always been musical persecutions. It’s one of the first things that get taken from a people, and it sort of breaks down their spirit. Because that’s at the very center of most people’s lives, especially in indigenous cultures. I would say to all those people that they’re barking up the wrong tree. They’re not well informed about what really lies ahead, about the possibilities of the marriage between acoustic and binary code. Remember, it’s in the hands of the practitioner. All the music, all the sounds around you are your orchestra: why limit them? Any sound that you can perceive or create should be part of the soundscape of the next century and the centuries to come. The next century isn’t going to sound like this one — the digital revolution has taken care of that. There will never be a change like you’re going to hear now. The new technology will be powerful and smart and very friendly and it will be an extension of your imagination. You will be able to go into cubbies you never could in the acoustic world, and it’s going to be called for. Things are moving fast, moving differently, there’s different sounds and different feelings — everything is changing.
Music should change. (dramatically) Or die.
True — just like music changed when the Grateful Dead ended. August 9, 1995 was a significant day for a lot of people — the previous generation may remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, but in this town, people remember what they were doing when they heard Jerry died. What has the death of Jerry Garcia and the Dead meant for you?
It’s tremendous. The Grateful Dead to me was a lot of things — a life, a habit, it was family ... so it was a multi-level thing with me, as opposed to people who see it from the outside. But I understand what you mean — I remember where I was, too. It’s one of those things that was really important, because it took something away that was very good and very rare, and a piece of everybody sort of died with him. Because he was a big part of what made it go around. So, I understand.
And the Dead will become a myth — part of the American musical history forever. Some Deadheads would no doubt consider his death a pivotal event in their lives.
(chuckles softly) He would laugh. Really. But he’d understand, too, because we all knew the power in the music. We knew that it was a potent energy to be used for good. If you point it in that direction, you can get a lot of good done in 30 years. But now everybody is doing what they wanted to do that we couldn’t do when we were in the Grateful Dead because it was a full-time deal. It takes a lot to be in the Grateful Dead for 30 years. So we’re doing other things, planting gardens, raising children, like we couldn’t before. I have a 14-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter and I was away for most of their formative years. So this will benefit them. I’m certainly filling my time with what I want to do, and that’s playing rhythm with these people.
Just not touring with the Dead must free up an enormous amount of time.
Oh, it’s great! I can really appreciate it. Now I see the leaves fall off the trees and grow back. I’ve never really lived a normal life, being in one place and seeing the seasons change and simple things like that. I miss the band — that goes without saying — but it was just a job well done. We did the best we could with what we had. I feel very good about it. When I look back, I look back and I smile. I don’t cry. And that’s what everybody should do. They’re all lucky they got to be a part of it while it was here on earth, because it was a very rare thing. It was a good thing, but nothing is forever.
In your opinion, who is doing the most capable job of following in your footsteps? There’s so many bands trying to carry the torch.
To be honest, I’m not listening to those bands. I’m not tuned into that, my ear is not there. So I don’t listen to all that. I haven’t heard them yet. They aren’t, truthfully, of that much interest to me. I’m sure that Phish are a very good band, because people have a real feeling for them. Not to marginalize who they are — I’m just listening to other things. But all of the music in this wake is all valid, it’s a wonderful thing and it’s great tribute, all these guys picking up these values ... the jamming, the open-ended stuff, the taping, all that. It’s a wonderful tribute to the power and the legacy of the Grateful Dead. And we all really appreciate that. Don’t misunderstand.
There’s a lot of people looking for a surrogate Dead.
That’s fine! Find it — if you must. And you’ll find it in many different places, you’ll find pieces of it here and there. You’ll be able to find pieces of it in other music. Go find it. It’ll never be anything like the Grateful Dead.
(Copyright 2010 by Jeffrey Charles Stratton. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.)
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