Summary.
Legendary Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart reinvented himself as one of the most brilliant ideologues and mentors of world-music with albums that are dazzling displays of percussions-based music.
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by Gemini and Piero Scaruffi)
The solo career of Mickey Hart, former legendary drummer of the Grateful Dead, but now an ethnomusicologist and writer, has been a stubborn search for the mystical and mythological roots of percussion. His records are multi-ethnic summits in which cultures from all over the world rediscover the human essence they share.
Hart had already released Rolling Thunder (Warner Bros, 1972), an album that, however, featured many of his acid-rock friends.
Harts main career began in 1975 when he joined Zakir Hussains Tal Vadya Rhythm Band, a percussion-only ensemble drawing from all over the world. The group changed its name to Diga Rhythm Band and produced an album titled Diga (Round, 1976 - UA, 1976 - Ryko, 1988), one of the milestones of world music before it was even called that. The record, which mainly incorporates Indian elements, is animated by a mystical verve. Within the crackling multitude of tablas, vibraphones emerge to impose a measure of order and melody, especially in the jazzy Magnificent Seven. But Diga is above all the irrepressible celebrations of Sweet Sixteen and Tal Mala, both derived from Indian styles yet so frenzied that they can rival the wild tribalism of Africa and Brazil.
At the head of the Rhythm Devils, the percussionist then performed the soundtrack for Apocalypse Now Session (Passport, 1980 - Ryko, 1990), credited to the Rhythm Devils (with Airto Moreira and Flora Purim simulating the sounds of the jungle).
Hart is alsoand above allresponsible for an album with Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings, Yamantaka (Rolling Thunder, 1983), a concert of strikes and resonances that remains one of the milestones of percussion music. Over the infinite resonances of Tibetan bells, which function as a kind of cosmic background radiation, Hart occasionally superimposes a few strokes of metallic percussion, dropped with excruciating slowness. If this suite represents the ultimate in stillness, its counterpart, The Revolving Mask Of Yamantaka, bristles with supersonic buzzes to the point of neurosis.
Building on those experiences, Hart became a patron of world music. Personally he released Dafos (Ryko, 1983), a collaboration with Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, featuring tour de force pieces such as Dry Sands Of The Desert (with Steve Douglas on winds).
In an ambient style Hart crafted the seventy-minute suite Music To Be Born By (Ryko, 1989), in which the rhythm is provided by the heartbeat of a fetus in the womb.
In his compositions and writings Hart has explored the prehistoric origins of music, arriving at illuminating theories that connect mythology with the history of percussion. Accordingly, in the lush and ominous fresco of At The Edge (Rykodisc, 1990), primitive instrumentation immerses itself in a forest of vital rhythms (starting from the very sounds of nature: crickets, thunder, streams), from which the sounds of various ethnic cultures slowly emerge. The album is accompanied by his autobiography, "Drumming At The Edge Of Magic."
The lush and sinister fresco of At The Edge (Rykodisc, 1990), the musical
counterpart of his autobiography "Drumming At The Edge Of Magic", aims for
a supernatural equilibrium between nature and human civilization, musically
represented by simple primitive instruments (whistles, rainstick, rattles,
tom-toms, gongs, cowbells, thumb piano, shakers, etc).
#4 for Gaia duets with the sounds of the forest themselves.
In a sense, pieces such as
Slow Sailing, a percussion duo with Zakir Hussain,
Brainstorm, a percussion duo with Babatunde Olatunji,
and Lonesome Hero, for percussion quartet plus berinbau and panpipes,
try to recreates with human-made sounds the haunting atmosphere of primitive
unspoiled natural environments.
The frantic Fast Sailing for Afro-Indian-American percussion quartet,
is more a display of "language" skills, of the range of emotions that rhythms
can produce.
While the electronic experiment of The Eliminators is rather shallow,
the even more experimental eight-minute Sky Water concocts a hypnotic
game of tones that involves
Jerry Garcia's guitar, Zakir Hussain's tabla and Hart's droning bells (and that
sounds like an extended ambient remix of Pink Floyd's languid ballads).
If the previous records had prioritized the "theme" over technique, Planet Drum (Ryko, 1991), which is the name of the album, book, ensemble, and tour all at once, is a tribute to technique. Hart and the other percussionists (representing every continent) seem to want to vivisect the timbres of the instruments. A more collective effort, more scientific than artistic, Planet Drum bears witness to an obsession rather than an inspiration.
Mystery Box (Ryko, 1996) applied the same techniques to the
song-format (Mint Juleps on vocals, lyrics by Robert Hunter), using an
"orchestra" of synthesizer,
flute, piano, didjeridu, guitar, bass, and, of course, percussions.
From the soulful elegy of Where Love Goes to the festive Afro-funk of Sandman,
from the Dylan-ian storytelling of Down The Road (with gospel choir and rootsy accordion)
to the solemn choral prayer of Sandre De Cristo,
the album mostly proves Hart's knack for rhythmic orchestration, while
adopting the postmodernist aesthetics of the
Talking Heads and the
Golden Palominos.
The pounding quasi-techno and orgiastic funk music Full Steam Ahead and
the surreal stylistic collage of John Cage Is Dead (propulsive but syncopated polyrhythm, 1940s' pop vocal harmonies, chaotic metallic noise)
rank among his most accomplished experiments.
Similarly, Supralingua (Ryko, 1998)
use a superb cast of performers, including several guest vocalists,
to compose more regular "songs".
Angola opens the album with a sample of the Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir.
Hart also promoted ethnic music via anthologies.
Global Drum Project (2007) is a collaboration with Indian tabla master
Zakir Hussain, the third one after the Diga Rhythm Band and
Planet Drum. They enlisted Giovanni Hidalgo on congas and Sikiru
Adepoju on talk drum.
Mysterium Tremendum (2012) and
Superorganism (2013) were credited to the Mickey Hart Band.
RAMU (2017) was credited to Mickey Hart alone.
Planet Drum returned with
In the Groove (2022).
