2000 Downloaded from http://www.magicalblend.com/readingroom/interviews/MickeyHeart.html Keeper of the Rhythms of the World Keeper of the Rhythms of the World: An Interview with Mickey Hart by Susan Dobra The members of the quintessential musical experiment called the Grateful Dead have moved on in various directions since the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, but none has kept such a furious pace and such eclectic company as drummer/percussionist Mickey Hart. Having established his reputation as a practicing ethnomusicologist with the publication of his books Drumming at the Edge of Magic and Planet Drum, he has involved himself in myriad projects designed to preserve and enhance the world's music - from the Smithsonian Institute's Folkways Recordings Project to the Endangered Music Project of the Library of Congress to playing with a veritable who's who of drummers and percussionists from everywhere on the planet. We talked with him about his most recent project with the Japanese drumming ensemble Kodo and about many of his other interests in a conversation that could have gone on for hours. His expertise in and knowledge about the music of the world and his enthusiasm about the power of drumming comes through in everything he talks about. He's still peaking after all these years. And Mickey Hart has no intention of slowing down. You were part of The Grateful Dead - one of the most extensive, most elaborate, most interesting experiments in communal creativity that perhaps this planet has ever seen. So what did you learn from it, or what have we learned from it? MH: Well, we learned that anything is possible, that freedom and creativity come in strange forms - sometimes you can't put it in a box, and sometimes it's hard to put a name on it. But if you believe in it strongly enough and you follow your bliss, anything can happen. It's amazing that the Grateful Dead flourished in an atmosphere as oppressive as the West, considering the use of drugs and the counter-culture, the war protests, the bad leaders, and all of the upheaval that went down in that time. Only in America - that says a lot. It also says a lot for the power of art, that they weren't able to shut us down. Did you get the feeling, as so many people did, that it was more than just a good time, that there was some important work being done? Oh, yeah, absolutely there was. There needed to be some spiritual doctoring here in the West, and we seem to be the ones that were chosen. Through the improvisation and the jam and the looseness of the creative spirit of the Grateful Dead, we were able to access those unknown areas. We still can't really put our finger on what the Grateful Dead wasłeven in the Grateful Dead we can't. We never tried. It's one of those things that is most elusive. It certainly wasn't the publicity machine, and it certainly wasn't the hits or the hooks, so it had to be something else. I think it was some unspoken place that we all tapped into, en masse, that proved to be uplifting - and fun. It's hard to have real fun. The Grateful Dead was just outside of control and mayhem. Nobody could really control it, not even the Grateful Dead. You couldn't buy it; you couldn't sell it. It wasnĘt one of those kind of commodities, so it was a wild thing. I think that was one of the things that people saw in it and loved in it. Do you think it was a kind of shamanism? Sure. It certainly had those kinds of overtones. When you think of shamanism, when you think of healing, you think of medicine. I think it was a medicine for the soul, absolutely. Garcia used to call it "seat of the pants shamanism" and I think that describes it the best. We were just flying by night. We didn't have any navigational tools - except our instruments - and of course the people, they called themselves the Deadheads, they kept the beacon lit when we were down, and we followed this forward collectively. We didn't even care where we were going. It wasn't really important; it was just the adventure of the journey. Everybody was on it together - that's what made it so interesting and so unscripted. What was the most magical or transcendent experience that you had with the Grateful Dead? I don't know if I can isolate just one magical moment. There were so many moments that just transcended words. That stuff is beyond words. Some people would call it a spiritual awakening or revelation that gives meaning to what life is all about. It happens in a flash and leaves in a flash; it's one of those kinds of things. I really can't give you any one moment, but there were a lot of them along the way. I guess looking in the faces of the people you affected, I think those are probably the most magical moments - seeing a crowd swaying and the joy in the faces and the holding of the kids in the audience and the grandparents and the people all coming together in peace and harmony and love and all that good stuff. I guess those are the magical moments. There were hundreds of thousands of them. Sometimes it was happening on a daily basis. That was the commodity we were dealing in. The question is a good one but it's hard to answer. It was a constant flow of those good vibes. At one point you started using a lot of digital looping and invented instruments like The Beam and other technological stuff. Was there a difference for you, experientially, between making rhythms technologically and beating on animal skins? Yeah, there's a difference, but it's like a diet - to have a full diet, and to be able to experience different emotions, you need a different palette. You need to be painting with different colors. So there were things I had to do and things I dreamt about that you couldn't do by playing a membrane. A long, vibrating string was the only way of doing it. You shouldn't exclude anything you love; you should be inclusive in thinking about who you are, what you are, and where you are going, and what makes you happy. So working with new colors, with new instruments, or with instruments that don't have any names is intriguing, it's exciting, it stimulates one's thoughts and it seems to come from some subconscious place; you wake up in the morning and you've got to vibrate a long 12-foot stringłyou just have to hear what it sounds like, and you have to scrape it and you have to put a super ball to it, you've got to bow it, you've got to find out what's on the other side. If it doesn't happen to you, you won't miss it, but if it happens to you and you don't do it, you'll never forgive yourself. It's one of those things. I never really had a problem with being motivated. I follow my dreams a lot. I have lucid dreaming and I remember my dreams. I write them down and I use self-hypnosis to remember them. I practice; it's a skill you have to learn if you think it's important. And I depend on my dreams. There's a synesthesia. I can see and hear the dream, sometimes I can taste it. I pay a lot of attention to the dream space, so I bring a lot back from that zone. The other night I had a marvelous dreaming night, a whole night of dreaming. I wasn't really sleeping; it was sort of like some kind of theta or beta/theta state. I remember everything from the dream and it was one of those glorious musical dreams where compositionally hundreds of things came 2000 together that I had been thinking about separately. These are the kinds of dreams that you cherish. Sometimes dreams are surreal or whatever, but these dreams were so informative and so creative that I am just running in the studio now, realizing that dream. This dream was so vivid that I wrote it all down and it referred to specific kinds of music and sounds, durations of pitches; it was very detailed. You don't get these kinds of dreams very often, so I made careful note of it. Does that happen to you a lot? I don't know what a lot is, because I don't really talk to other people about how often they dream these dreams, but it comes in waves, sometimes I dream silly stuff or terrifying dreams, but a lot of it has to do with some kind of musical component, because that's part of my code, that's what I am coded to dream for. Your newest musical venture is with the 21-member Japanese drumming ensemble Kodo. You wrote wonderfully descriptive liner notes, and in reading them, I was surprised to see that Kodo had done no fewer than 18 CDs before this one. How did you hook up with them, and how does a project like this get started? Well, it was one of those things that just sort of fell together. Back in the 70's they were called Ondekoza [own-DEK-ko-ZAH], "the demon drummers from Japan." So when I saw that in the paper I said, "Demon drumming? I gotta see demon drumming. That's my kind of drumming." So I went down to the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco; it was the first time that taiko had come to the United States. This was in 1975 or '76. What is taiko? Taiko is a style of Japanese drumming that relates to a certain kind of drum. It is actually a new style, not ancient style - it's from the 50's. Some of the drums were used in old Shinto ritual, but basically it is a new celebratory music. It's not sacred; it's secular, and very robust, very martial - it's very powerful drumming. It goes from these great enormous waves of power to these delicate raindrops, and it sort of emulates the forces of nature. When I first heard it, I wanted to quit the Grateful Dead and run off and join Kodo, it was so powerful. I thought, "This is the kind of drumming that I want to do for the rest of my life." But of course I changed my mind. It was close - it was the number one runner up. But it was too organized for me. I realized that I was really an improvisationalist. Kodo is very composed because you can't have that many drummers playing together and just jam. So you saw Kodo perform at the Kabuki Theatre, and then what happened? I asked if I could record them and they said yes, so I recorded them and I took a copy and gave them a copy and that's what started my relationship with taiko. When the Grateful Dead was playing at The Forum, I invited Yoshikazu, their lead drummer over, and he played with me on The Beast [a huge conglomeration of drums and rhythm instruments played by Dead's two drummers]. They invited me to be the "talking head" on their Acropolis video, and then they asked me if I would like to do something else with them and I said "Let me think about it." And again it was as the result of a dream - the dream was to get them all in a room and bring in the Planet Drummers: Zakir [Hussein], Giovanni [Hidalgo], Airto [Moreira], and all those guys, take away the head trip - you know, the composition - and just play, edit it, put ecstatic singing over it, and make a 5.1 surround recording of it. So there was a confluence of things: an opportunity to work with the great Kodo drummers from Japan and also to work in 5.1 What is 5.1? Surround. It's the new medium, the world medium. That's what everybody should be getting soon, 5.1. It's slowly working its way into the marketplace. It's a left-front, center, right-front, left-rear, right-rear and subwoofer. Stereo is dead; it's just over. So the idea was I would propose that we would do this radical, outside of the box, music that was taiko-based but that wasn't a taiko record. Because they didn't need me to do taiko; they could have found a bunch of other producers that would do fine taiko work. I wanted to take them where they had never been before. So would they accept the challenge? It wasn't a matter of whether they could do it, but would they accept the construct, my method? I proposed it, they thought about it, and they accepted it. We laid down the gauntlet. And look at the results - superb. Sublime. This is the best percussion/voice record that I have ever done, or ever heard. This is absolutely a gift from the gods. It was like another version of Planet Drum, only it was a taiko based - the Japanese spirit was in every cut. And I tried to maintain that without overpowering the session. But it was easy, because they are so there and wonderful to work with, and the styles just went together like bread and butter. So that's basically the genesis of it all. You say it was very composed. It took shape as a kind of shamanic journey, did it not? Yes, and in all first takes! I say "roll tape" one time at the beginning of the session as a kind of formality, but anything that moved in that room that made a sound got caught on tape. Anyone that walked in that room to start a groove, and that tape was rolling. This is the way it is in my sessions; I just go and blast. And then afterwards, I'll sit down and edit for a week or two. But I don't ever look back. How long did you record? A week - seven days. I've got thirty or forty hours of recording. You have to be powerful every day. After about ten or twelve hours, you start drifting. You can't have the same concentration after twenty hours of play. And we're not doing massive amounts of drugs and we're not kids anymore so we have to pace ourselves - and that's the way it should be. You should be able to savor the moments rather than having to squeeze it out of a tube. So these were very intense sessions. I would say we drummed at least eight hours a day. That's formidable. I mean real drumming. Are you taking it on tour? We're talking about it. It's exciting to think about realizing this out on tour. It's going to be a major undertaking if it happens. I look forward to it. I hope we can free up our schedules. It would be a treat for us and for the people. This is sonically and musically such a marvelous thing. I just can't wait for it to be released. It points the way to a new world music - that's what a lot of people are saying. I never thought Turkish ecstatic singing and the Gyuto Tantric Choir and Japanese singing with whatever kind of groove going under would ever work! I mean, I never even thought about it, never dreamt about it until we all got together and I started saying, "Just what are the possibilities? Mondo Head is a good name for the CD, then. It is. It's about the Gaia of rhythm, the Gaia of interconnectedness of all creatures, all beings, and being able to have conversations with all cultures, being able to speak their own language but to interact and learn the sensibilities of others. That's what good world music is all about - or the world's music; there's no such thing as world music - being able to come together in a meaningful way - not the only way, but a meaningful way. All cultures should have their voice heard - not all on the same 2000 recording, necessarily, because it might get a bit confusing. So you have to pick your shot. Some things don't go together so great. Some people don't resonate. They're put together and they feel strange. There have been people who will remain unnamed that I've invited here that weren't able to interact with the other people I threw together - I do that a lot. I like to do that. It's fun for me. And it happens from time to time, but not often, that people just freeze up. Or the magic isn't there. Magical Blend is such a marvelous title for music. You could have called this record Magical Blend, because that's what it's about. And it's not always a magical blend. Sometimes it's a forced blend that you have to take twenty times before it starts to come together. And I'm not really interested in that kind; that's not really my thing. It must be a challenge for you to keep your schedule open enough for things to fall into it. It sounds like you've got so much going on. Why are you working so hard? Well, it's not working. I don't look at it in terms of working, like when you go to an office and punch a clock. I'm busy all the time. One of your many endeavors is the Endangered Music Project with the Library of Congress. What exactly are you doing with that? We're locating the collections that are in crisis, or endangered, and digitizing them, giving access to them, and releasing them to the world. But sometimes you have to go through hundreds of hours, thousands of hours. What form are they in? They're everything from wax cylinders to wire to glass to acetate to magnetic tape to metal to yak butter. There are many different kinds of ways we've imprinted sound since 1890. Our first field recording is from March 15, 1890, by Jesse Fewkes. It was a Passamaquoddy Indian song in Calais, Maine. Jesse walked out in that field on that fair day, and he started a revolution. Actually, every March 15th we have a Jesse Fewkes party. I play his recording. Is there a lot of music that is endangered? Well, music can be endangered in two ways: One way is if the music itself is dying because nobody is practicing it and the other is when the medium on which it is recorded is starting to disintegrate. So I have to find the music that is about to be lost and grab it, throw it into the digital domain, and then figure out what to do with it. So I'm mostly a hunter/gatherer in that sense. The Library of Congress has the largest indigenous music collection in the world - millions of hours. So finding it and digitizing it is an important thing to do. This is stuff from all over the world - some of it given, some of it gathered. When people wanted to make sure that their collection was safe forever, they gave it to the Library of Congress. A lot of this music was lost to these cultures, ripped away from them, and this was their birthright - thousands of years of history in these oral traditions, just ripped away. So giving it back is one of the greatest handshakes that America, and specifically the Library of Congress in this case, can do. It's an amazing place. It's got 470 miles of bookshelves, and beyond the bookshelves and the maps and records is everything that's ever been published - you know, the copyright office is in that domain, as well. I was showing it to Steve Miller the other day, and he wanted to see his records, so I just walked him over to the stacks, to the Steve Miller section, and pulled out his albums. You wouldn't think there would be room for everything. Oh, yeah - well, it's the copyright office. They have to; it's the law. And now we're acquiring new facilities - it's an underground bunker outside of Washington - where everything will be digitized so it will be able to kept in a smaller place. So sometimes the original material might be decomposed, but the copy will be there forever. There's a debate on now, in fact, about whether we should keep the original, because the original takes up so much room, when you can have just a little binary code. So we're migrating - it's called "digital migration." We're migrating the analog world into the digital domain, and then deciding what the final repository will be. How did you get involved with that project? Senator Tom Daschle called me, and he asked me if I wanted to be a trustee to the Library of Congress. And I didn't even know what a trustee was. I said, "Are you sure you've got the right Mickey Hart?" And he said, "Well, Mickey, you probably are the most qualified for this job." So I said, "Well, I'll call you back," and I talked to some of my friends, and they said, "This is the Library of Congress, the American Folklife Center - take it, take it!" So I called him back and I said, "Well, Senator, you got your man. Sign me up." And that's how it started. I was already on the Board of Directors at the Folkways [Recordings project] at the Smithsonian at the time, but that was small - only 2500 LP's [long-playing records]. That's like a pea-shoot compared to the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the Oz of libraries; it's the digital Alexandria. It's the greatest repository of information in the world. So how could you refuse that? For all of the kids, and for all the people, forever, there will be all this information - for free, really. Just go up on the website, www.loc.gov, and all of the information of the ages will be available. Because every musician or every artist bases their skill on some body of work. If there was no jug-band music, there would be no Grateful Dead. If there was no panhandle music of Texas, there would be no Steve Miller. It just goes on and on. If Dylan had never heard Appalachian music, there'd be no Dylan. So we all originally base our skill and our love and our passion on something that makes the light go on, on some body of work. And that's why it's important to preserve all this music. Also, you have to remember that these are oral traditions. So these are the histories, the dreams, the stories, the hopes of thousands of years of civilization, of evolution. Perhaps our greatest creation as a civilization is our art, specifically the music, our oral tradition. And that's why I fight so hard for its preservation and curation. I spend more time in Washington than I ever thought I would. Another project you're involved with has to do with music, the brain and neurologic function. At the Music Has Power Awards in New York City, Oliver Sacks said, "Music is as powerful as any medicine. It has a unique way of accessing the brain and the nervous system." You are involved with his study of that, are you not? I'm on the board at the Beth Abraham Institute in the Bronx, where they study brainwave function and how music and vibration affect the brain. Oliver and I testified in 1991 to the Committee on Aging on the healing power of music. So it started with that. He's written about the Grateful Dead in his books, and he's been on the stage many times. Oliver and I are old friends. But he's a real scientist and he's proven that, with Alzheimer's and dementia, a rhythmically coordinated activity can bring them out of the darkness. Now we're finding that universally there's a 40-cycle notch in the brain that's missing in the motor- impaired. So when you put that back, it's like recon 1985 necting their memory, their voice - it's really fascinating. We're holding drum circles at Beth Abraham now, doing brain scans and CAT scans and PET scans and finding out what the brain looks like before, during, and after an auditory driving experience. If you see these people in wheelchairs being wheeled in - and I've done it for two or three hundred at a time - they're just wheeled in and they're out of it, they're gone - they're just staring out and their heads are drooping off to the side. We give them simple drums or rattles or something, and all of a sudden they're throbbing and beating in sync and their heads perk up and they're smiling! They're alive! They are there! And then when the drumming stops, they're gone. They eventually drift back into the darkness. But for awhile, while it's happening, they are alive again! In varying degrees, you understand. There's one woman who's about 93 - all she can do is move her right leg. So I put a little jingle on her leg. And she sits there for hours. I mean, I can't do it for an hour. But she sits there and moves that right foot up and down and in time and she's so energized. Then when it's over, she looks as though she's sitting there looking at the goldfish or the birdcages or staring out the window, just blank. But while it's goin' down, she's alive. Connie Tomaino, the leader of this therapy at Beth Abraham, is a fascinating scientist who, with Oliver Sacks, is doing some of the premier work in this field. This is the next frontier for music - neurologic function. That is, how we can recreate it on a daily basis? What are the ingredients and how do we do it? We're going by the seat of the pants, now, as musicians. Once science cracks the code, the HMO's will be able to pay for music as a therapy, a doctor will be able to write a prescription and it will be paid for by the insurance companies. Music will be used as a legitimate therapy. That's the future of music. Music is medicine. Take the concert tickets off your insurance, right? In some states they do! But now we're trying to federalize it, make it so it's universal. I've been asked to testify in front of the Senate with Oliver this year, to the Committee for Aging, to bring them up to speed on neurologic function, music and the brain, how vibration affects brainwave function and what is the curative power - music as medicine basically, and how all this really works in science. Not just in music therapy but pure science. So, we talked on the therapeutic side in '91 and now with the new machines, the measurement of brainwave function has allowed us to be able to see deep and accurately into neurologic functions. That's another major spoor that I'm following and supporting and trying to raise awareness and funds for. You learned this because you had a personal experience with your grandmother that got you interested in this, didn't you? I played the drum for her. She was on her way out, she couldn't talk - Alzheimer's, advanced Alzheimer's - and I just was sort of giving her like the Last Rites, playing for her, and all of a sudden she said my name. I couldn't believe it. That was my first real hit. I had never really known anybody with Alzheimer's and I'd never played a drum one-on-one with anybody. And this was my grandma. So I had her, isolated. And she got it. That's sort of what triggered my whole interest in the motor-impaired with Alzheimer's and dementia. This is different way of looking at this phenomenon, I want to know why and how does this work? We know that it works, but how can I recreate it? Again, every time. How can I crack the code? That's the grail. Now we have friends in the Senate and the House and on Appropriations who are definitely interested, AARP all of these organizations who are interested in making quality of life a priority over 50. Believe me, a lot of us are going to be over 50. I'm already over 50. I can go into the House of Pancakes and get my pancakes free. That was a startling revelation. I have never really cashed my "age ticket" in yet. You have this beautiful home and you can really lay back and do pretty much what you want. Yet you do all these projects. Why? That's what I do. I don't really know anything else to do with my life; this is what I love to do. I've never known anything other than that, and it seems to be the thing I'd like to do till the day I die. Music and arts are like that; they keep you alive. I'm 58 and I feel really young and I move and I'm active. I think that being involved in all these life-giving opportunities are part of my longevity. I notice artists who don't destroy themselves for their art and in their art have a tendency to enjoy the quality of their life until the day they die. I'm looking forward to that, to see how long it will last and how inspired I'll be at the end - how long I can maintain in this fashion. I haven't given up, the well has not gone dry and I don't see any end to it because music and art is limitless. The idea is to accept your fantasies. That's the only thing that's not limited. There are no cops here in this world of art to tell me to stop. You don't get a speeding ticket for going too fast or too far. So in a way it offers longevity and if you're lucky you even get paid for it, you can make a living out of it. I have my family, which is a priority for me. I don't spend all my time on the road anymore. I love my life here, I have my complex and studio, and with the internet I am able to do more business while traveling less. It's what they call the balance of things; it's what I'm trying to do now. The CD's Over the Edge and Back: The Best of Mickey Hart, The Perfect Jewel: Sacred Chants of Tibet by The Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir, produced by Mickey Hart, and Kodo's Mondo Head all came out in spring, 2002, all in 5.1 DVD Audio. . 0