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 Mickey Hart Interview: The State of the Beat
 by Steve Silberman
 
 Supralingua
 Mickey Hart and Planet Drum
 Release date: August 4, 1998
 RCD 10396
 US$15.98
 
 Rykodisc site: http://www.rykodisc.com
 Hart's site: http://www.dead.net
 
 Steve Silberman: What does "supralingua" mean?
 
 Mickey Hart: Beyond language, beyond words -- before speech. The sounds on
 the record don't have literal meanings. It's like what we used to do before
 language, when we had emotions that came from other places. I wanted to
 break loose of the verse-chorus-bridge merry-go-round for this one. I wanted
 it to be a new space.
 
 SS: Some of the words almost sound like words in other languages. Are there
 words that are recombined syllables of other words?
 
 MH: Yes. It's like glossolalia. There are words that will sound almost like
 something you know, and there are some words that do have meanings in other
 languages. It opens the imagination to imagine words that are not there --
 or are there, perhaps.
 
 It's the ecstatic sound of the voice, which is the most important thing in
 trance music and sacred music. You get beyond the literal meaning and get
 into the sound of it, because it's a sound we're after. The meaning comes
 later.
 
 SS: What proportion of the sounds on this record were generated organically,
 rather than with synthesizers?
 
 MH: Almost all of them. My specialty is taking the archaic sounds and
 processing the shit out of them. Most of my stuff, none of it comes from
 synthesis. It's all based in acoustics. I take what's there -- a harmonic or
 a fundamental -- and do the strangest things with it and build on what's
 there. That's the game.
 
 SS: How many of these tracks were created by drummers playing in the same
 room together?
 
 MH: All of them. There were some composed pieces, like "Yabu" and "Angola"
 and "Indoscrub," that I made sequences out of, and then we played to the
 sequences. Every day we would play loose, take an hour or so to just jam.
 Then I chopped up some of the jams, and used them as the basis of some of
 the tunes. So we have the best of both worlds. I wanted not just the
 compositions, I wanted to find the moment. Everything started as real people
 playing real music in real time.
 
 SS: You might be the only guy who could get the Gyuto monks as session
 singers.
 
 MH: [laughing] I know! I had them do that specifically for this, three years
 ago, when they were here at my place. I had them do some wild tracking so I
 could have source material. I described to them exactly what I wanted, then
 I sampled them, and flew them in with RAMU ["Random Access Musical
 Universe," Hart's custom sampling and triggering array.]
 
 I've always resisted using them en masse like that, because I never wanted
 to mix the sacred music with other kinds of music. Everybody has their line
 they won't cross. But I met with the Dalai Lama a few months ago, and I
 asked him about it, and he told me to relax. He said that the sound has to
 get out, no matter what. "It will do some good," he said. [The listeners]
 don't have to know what it's about, it doesn't have to be in the right
 context. The most important thing is that the sound gets to be heard. After
 that conversation, things really opened up for me. Mixing digeridoos with
 monks with jews harps -- things that I would never have done. I was holding
 on too tight. So I started mixing up all these sounds, and I felt great
 about it.
 
 I won't take people's rituals out of context. But no one invented the voice.
 No one owns the drum. Music doesn't know where one country stops and another
 begins.
 
 I was exposed to this music when I was young. I fell onto the Folkways
 collection when I was a kid, so I thought the whole world was like this. I
 didn't know that I was the only one within 100 miles of my house who was
 fascinated with Pygmy music. I was about ten years old.
 
 I looked at [Third World] music as the great works: the Picassos and Renoirs
 of sound. I didn't think that art music from Europe was very sophisticated
 as far as trance, ecstasy and rapture. I wasn't really after a head trip
 like art music was. I didn't have any money to go to the symphony. I was a
 street music kind of guy, no matter where the street was -- whether it be in
 Marrakesh or whereever.
 
 SS: How does it feel playing with a rock and roll band again?
 
 MH: Great. I love it. I didn't realize how much I missed it. I'm not a big
 guitar fan, but playing with the Other Ones... I forgot how great Phil was.
 Bobby's playing at the top of his form, and playing with John Molo is a joy.
 
 SS: How is playing with Molo different from playing with Kreutzmann?
 
 MH: Everybody has their own personal signature. Molo is very consistent.
 Billy and I were very intuitive, and had a certain flow, but that took years
 to get to. Molo and I just fell into a really great groove. Billy is a very
 jazzy kind of drummer, very fluid. I loved the way he played the song. John
 leaves the right holes at the right time, and he listens to me really well,
 and I listen to him. I feel very energized. It's new again. We've changed a
 lot of the time signatures, changed the tempos. We have a new conversation
 going between the members. So it's revitalized.
 
 SS: Whose idea was it to bring back "The Eleven?"
 
 MH: That was a mutual idea. I ferreted out the words and gave them to Bob.
 I said, "Memorize this -- 'Eight-sided whispering hallelujah hatrack'!"
 And he did. 
 
 SS: Some of that stuff is pretty close to "supralingua" already.
 
 MH: Yeah, that was Hunter at his most coherent, or incoherent. It had no
 real meaning. But you understood the words.
 
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