2000

http://www.talkingleaves.org/w04hart.htm

Rhythms of the Planet:
An Interview with Mickey Hart
By David Kupfer
(interview conducted June, 2003, in Occidental, CA)

Along with being a member of one of the longest running '60s rock hippie
bands, The Grateful Dead (recently renamed simply, "The Dead"), Drummer
Mickey Hart has had a 30-year passion for in-the-field recording using the
latest in portable high-tech audio equipment. From his early work as a
part-time music ethnologist, Hart has evolved into a leader in the effort to
preserve endangered world music. The Northern California-based Hart is on
the leadership committee of Save Our Sounds and is integrally involved with
America's Recorded Sound Project at the Smithsonian Institute and the
Library of Congress, which is in the process of digitizing the Folklife
Center's publicly owned, deteriorating music collection. Hart took a break
from rehearsing with the other members of the Dead for their Summer 2003
tour to speak with me.



DK: You just finished and had published a book for National Geographic,
Songcatchers: In Search Of The World's Music. It talks about the first
collectors of native peoples' indigenous music. Who were the first Song
Catchers?

MH: The first in the field was Harvard zoologist Jesse Walter Fewkes. On
March 15, 1890, in Calais, Maine he recorded the Passaquoddy Native
Americans' salutation and harvest songs. That was the first field recording
on the Edison treadle. It was operated like a Singer sewing machine but was
rolling wax. Not a disc, a wax cylinder. Berliner a few years later
developed the disc. The book tells the history of the amazing men and women
who went out into the field to capture the sounds of indigenous languages
and music. The tales of their adventures, often at great personal risk and
usually burdened with cumbersome equipment, are fascinating. The many types
of recording machines that were created over the years are amazing. We were
able to collect great photographs to illustrate this book. It is important
that we know and understand about the world's musical heritage and our
ongoing efforts to preserve it for our future generations.

DK: Do you see yourself carrying on the mission and work of Alan Lomax?

MH: Well, we were on the same trail. I came in with Nagra (recorders) and
digital domain, stereo and high fidelity and supersonics. We have done the
same thing, recording indigenous music as best we can with the equipment of
the day. We did it for different reasons perhaps. I don't see myself
carrying on anyone's legacy. My involvement with The Endangered Music
Project is along the same line. With Rykodisc, I was able to create a series
of recordings that are designed to cross borders and expand musical
horizons. Many of the cultural traditions practiced by the people on these
recordings are in danger of extinction; others have vanished altogether,
leaving only the recorded songs behind. I believe that world music tells us
where we have been and where we are going.

DK: What are the major challenges, in the Library of Congress "Save Our
Sounds"' effort to preserve endangered recordings?

MH: Two things: preservation and access, those are the two challenges. To
locate collections in crisis. We have over a million and a half hours of
music at the Library of Congress. Nobody can listen to all of that in a
lifetime. A lot of the material has just been given to us, bequeathed to us,
making it the greatest music archive in the world. The sound engineers and
the archivist are carefully looking at these collections and finding the
ones that are deteriorating through oils and molds and viruses,
disintegration of the medium on which they were recorded. Transferring them,
while we can still play them, into a medium that will remain forever, which
is digital domain, is one challenge. The other challenge is to allow access
to people. Some of the music is available on the internet at www.loc.gov.
Click on the national digital library and go to the American Folk Life
Center; there is all this music that has been digitized. Hundreds and
hundreds of recordings have been put on the internet; same with Folkways. A
lot of archives are starting to go digital.

DK: What have you found are the political implications of promoting world
music to ethnic people?

MH: It gives them back their identities, their stories, myths, dreams, and
cosmology--which was ripped away from them, taken away by war, revolution,
social movement, economics, the Church. When the missionaries went to a
culture they would give the people a new bible and a new music. When you
give music back to a culture, like my Indonesian experience which I relate
in the book, it was like a prisoner of war or a long-lost relative returning
home. They thanked me for helping bring back to them one of the greatest
achievements of their culture, their music and their art. They hadn't
practiced it in 40 or 50 years; everybody had died or moved on and their
music was forgotten or lost. These were their greatest creations; they heard
about them from their grandparents, but had never heard them. We did the
same thing in Hawaii. One of the most beautiful things you can do for a
culture is to give them back music which was taken from them.

DK: What is your view of the late Baba Olatunji's impact on world music?

MH: I would call him the Johnny Appleseed of world music. He was
groundbreaking, he brought powerful trance West African multidimensional
rhythms here, and he introduced those hot syncopations to the streets of New
York and influenced generations of many musicians like Coltrane, Carlos
Santana, and Bob Dylan. He was a big influence on Western music in general.
He was a nice guy, a sweet man. He linked drums with a lifestyle as opposed
to performance--good rhythm with good health. He fantasized years ago that
there would be a drum in every home. He didn't live to see that, but there
are thousands and thousands of drums in homes today because of him.

One of the most important things about Baba was that he introduced drums and
percussion on a completely different level. He introduced the West African
rhythms. He brought that culture and formed a new gumbo--in a missionary
kind of way that we could understand because not only was there rhythm,
there was melody. He was as good a singer as he was a percussionist. He
created melody over powerful drum rhythms that were totally irresistible. He
made this beautiful, magical record, "Drums of Passion" and lit the whole
subculture on fire. His impact was international. I was in Spain, France,
and Germany and I saw the whole European Jet Set dancing to Baba in 1960. At
all the parties, they were playing "Drums of Passion." He sold a huge number
of copies. It was unprecedented; no one had done such a thing before.

Besides being a great drummer and a great vocalist, he was a great person,
and he had a lot of enthusiasm that was infectious. Baba would give rhythm
seminars at his clinic in New York, to women and children. Through his
method of teaching, he was able to bring the essence down to an
understandable place so non-musicians would be able to enjoy percussion,
without having to learn specific beats. It was mostly the rush of group
rhythm that Baba was really into and that is what I have always been into.
He introduced a whole rhythmic nomenclature to the West that was
irresistible. He really left his mark. He truly passed on a lot of his
rhythmic seeds, far and wide.

DK: And his impact on you personally?

MH: Let me put it this way: when I heard "Drums of Passion," that put me on
a whole other path of wanting to explore the world's rhythms and being able
to enjoy and understand them. That talking drum sound he made on the first
record, I still can't get it. I have been chasing it for 40 years; that's
the archetype, for me.

DK: When did you adopt rhythmic evangelism as your life work?

MH: I never really adopted it, it just happened. I never set out to do that.
I am just really enthusiastic about the power of rhythm. I see t
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he world in
rhythmic terms, the relationships I have with my wife and children are in
rhythm, so I know when I am out of rhythm. Everything that lives has a
rhythm. The rhythm of life, of the body, yoga breathing, it is all about
rhythm. When I play, I try to get into the code, into the trance. I've
always been after the trance. Trance is the big thing for me. If you don't
play for trance, then you are just performing music that won't reach the
soul.

DK: When did you come to understand the trance?

MH: The trance was realized when I was a kid, when I was really young. 5, 6,
7, I was playing alone, listening to my dad's practice pad. It was hollow,
it had a hollow sound to it, and the tone of the pad was reverberant. It
attracted me and it riveted my attention. That was puppy trance. I didn't
realize it then, but I was entraining with the rhythms. Then I caught myself
listening to trolleys and street noise, and the rhythm of the city. My
mother would call me inside, and I never wanted to come in. I always wanted
to stay out and listen. In the rain, I'd always want to be out listening to
the rain. That was the catalyst for this evangelist thing of mine. I didn't
tell people about it. They wouldn't understand. Nobody else in my
neighborhood played. It was my little secret and it was beautiful because I
could keep it as my own, no one could get in, it was my private world.
Separate from everyone else, retreating and going into trance. At the time I
didn't realize what trance was, even how to spell it.

DK: How have you experienced drumming transforming individuals?

MH: It makes them better persons, and if you are a better person and more
aware, then you bring beauty into the world and you make it a better place
to live. You won't be greedy or hateful, because good rhythm is the antidote
for hate. I see it in those terms. I see this as a medicine, an elixir, as
opposed to a performance medium. Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa performed some
great, beautiful drum solos, but the good stuff, for me, was never with the
virtuosos, it was more in the group pulsing.

DK: What benefits have you noticed from your playing practice as you grow
older?

MH: It keeps me young. Look at me, I am almost 60 years old and I am really
in solid physical shape; I feel great. I love to play the drums; I'll go for
3-4 hours. This is not cocktail music, this is power drumming. It feeds me,
it nurtures me, it nourishes me, and it makes me whole. I can't imagine my
life without playing drums. It wouldn't be worth living for me. I want to do
this until the day that I die. It gives you a sense of well being and
heightens your creativity. It makes you walk with a little spring in your
step. It keeps you out of trouble.

DK: You've said you know the rhythm of Washington, DC. How did that come to
be? How did you develop that?

MH: I tried to entrain with it, get in its rhythm and I try to understand it
instead of fighting it. I hang out with great lawmakers and I work at the
Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. It is amazing to see what these
people go through to try to create a government that functions, that is
responsive in some respect to the people that live in this nation. I have
great respect for some of them, the archivists, and the people at the
Library of Congress who you never hear about. There is no better place in
the world to do serious research than the Library of Congress.

DK: Lately, you seem rather engaged politically, actively supporting Boxer
and Pelosi. Is this newfound, your direct involvement in electoral politics?

MH: It is newfound. I never knew any politicians. I never voted until a few
years ago because I didn't know any politicians, and if I didn't know you, I
wouldn't vote for you. Getting to know them has been the only way to
seriously give my vote and mean it. I know Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. I
support them, I know them to be great warriors, and they are fighting for
the underdog, for the oppressed, for civil liberties, from where I sit. That
is my politics. I do have Republican friends. I do, and we don't agree on
some things. But I can hang out with them.

DK: Your thoughts on the present political rhythms in the world?

MH: It's awful, it's a mess. It's chaos, nonsense, makes no sense; you have
rhythms colliding, cultures colliding over money, over land, over Gods! I
always thought everyone had a right to believe in what they wanted to. But
we are dealing with a legacy of thousands of years, so it's not like we
started it. Islam and the Christians and the Jews have been spreading their
message through the sword; everybody is fighting each other. There is hardly
anyone who doesn't spread their gospel through fear and intimidation and
threats, and sometimes killing, mass murder. The world is very seriously out
of rhythm, very seriously out of rhythm.

DK: There has been a tremendous increase and interest in drumming recently.
What do you think of the phenomenon's broad impact?

MH: People want to get together and they want to have a common experience
which we can all enjoy--kids, women, men, and older people. It is a great
equalizer. In the eyes of rhythm, everyone is the same. In a drum circle,
communal drumming, you get a chance to create a community. All you need is
to bring a drum to a drum circle and play it. It's no organized religion;
though it does have spiritual overtones to me, rhythm is a different kind of
church. You are the pastor, the rabbi, the Ayatollah and you get what you
can get out of it.

It is another way of communicating with someone that is non-verbal. You
reach someone's soul more than their head. We have drum circles with
Alzheimer's patients, with older people in wheelchairs who have dementia,
motor impairment problems, and we do it in cancer wards to help people with
their spirit and help them come together. We get them off the television and
cards and bring them together and watch them come alive. The physiological
and neurological impact of this is really important. We are finding out now
that 40 cycles is missing universally with the motor-impaired. That means,
when you put those 40 cycles back in, they start to come alive again, they
start to talk again, start to dance, remember things. When the beat stops,
they go back to their darkness. So that is the power--that kind of power is
something you cannot turn away from. People like Dr. Connie Tomaino and
Oliver Sachs are doing all these great things with rhythmic stimuli.

DK: Have you discovered any specific rhythms which are more powerful?

MH: There are many rhythms that are powerful, I find the clavé to be one of
the most powerful rhythms, besides just the straight back beat or 4-4. It
has to be simple enough like the clavé. These rhythms are West African; they
came up through Bahia, Cuba, and New Orleans. Those are a lot of powerful
rhythms. It has to do with the sonic quality of it as well as the intent,
the passion that is brought to bear while you are making the rhythm. Those
two things are very important to make the power potent. But one universal?
No, because sometimes you want to get up and dance yourself into rapture.
Other times you want to go into the ecstasy of it all, the quiet side, which
I love. I play quietly a lot, more than I play loud. I just sit there and
get into the zone.

DK: What is an example of a miraculous experience people have had using
music as therapy?

MH: My grandmother was a perfect example. She had advanced Alzheimer's and
she couldn't speak, not even say my name, for the last six months before she
passed and at the last stage, she was pretty gone, she couldn't do much. But
the connection to her soul was made by me playing the drum. She lit up when
I played. I played the drums for half an hour, and then she said my name two
times. It was amazing! She spoke! How could she do that? So I put those two
things together, rhythm and healing, and to bring someone out of that
darkness. That was the first time I had seen it one-on-one, the healing
power. I have played hurt, with broken fingers o
1afc
r the flu and by the time it
was over, I couldn't feel the pain. It came back after I stopped but while
you are playing you can transcend the pain. I've seen many things like this,
but my first experience was with my grandmother.

DK: What new developments in music therapy excite you?

MH: The science of it. Now we have machines to measure brain wave function
and what the brain looks like before, during, and after an auditory driving
experience. The synapses are firing through the mid brain, the mid brain is
sending signals out and you are reacting to it. The big thing that is going
to happen this century is watching the brain "on music" and seeing what it
does, and finding out exactly what rhythms do what. A CAT scan can now
measure the brain wave function without getting mixed up with other parts of
the body. That was always the problem with EKG's, they couldn't separate the
impulse power, from the movement of the limbs, and it would confuse the
machines and not see the brain wave function. Now we are getting pure
imaging, and people are starting to write papers on alpha wave production.

We know music and rhythm works, but how do they work? Can you do it on a
daily basis? Can my doctor prescribe a rhythm for me? That is what I look
forward to within my lifetime. A doctor will be able to write a prescription
for music therapy and specific rhythms in music that will do a specific
thing to get a certain kind of result. We haven't known the code. In the
next few years we are going to bust the code. Doctors are now taking "the
rhythmic arts" seriously.

DK: Has neuroscience been able to derive certain healing functions through
specific rhythms?

MH: Absolutely. There are studies now that point the way. They are
primitive. We know that certain beats, anything related to the heartbeat,
are healing. Usually I feel my own heartbeat before I play. It is the mother
rhythm, the rhythm that your mother gave you and her mother before her.
Remember, your mother's heartbeat is beating an amazing tattoo on you for
eight, nine months, you hear this great bass sound beating while in the
womb. The one thing that was constant, was the heartbeat. Then you came out
and emerge into another sonic world, a different rhythm world, but you are
still holding that tattoo, that beat.

DK: Is the physiology of sound a potential substitute for prescription
drugs?

MH: It is not a substitute but another aid. This is another, different kind
of medicine. It serves its own purposes. Percussion and rhythms and music in
general serve to heal in a parallel universe.

DK: Tito Puente and Machito were early on very influential in your
professional life. How was it for you visiting Cuba, the nation that
contributed so mightily to the percussion of contemporary music?

MH: It was very satisfying to go to Cuba and to just hear the clavé being
played in the home of that kind of rhythm. The music caressed me and soothed
me. I walked through the streets and the whole city was playing music. You
never hear that here! It was coming out of most homes, or people were
jamming on the street, musicians with percussion, a guitar or trumpet or
flute. It was thrilling. And hanging out with Castro until 4:30 a.m. was
cool.

DK: What did you think of his character, charisma, take on politics?

MH: We talked; he has his own way, his own fears. He doesn't want to see a
bunch of McDonald's on his island. He understands the power of music. Music
and revolution is what we spoke about, trance and the spirit world. He wore
me out. He was a good hang, very charismatic. He knows about chicken
gizzards and he knows about AIDS, reforestation, literacy, a lot of things.
You can't be free in Cuba. It is really sad, but we had great dialogue. It
was very friendly and open, but I never forgot who he was. I know what is
going on there. Just think, if he let everybody into that little island that
is so beautiful, that place would be overrun in a second. Look what the
mafia did. You feel that ocean breeze and smell that ocean. The people are
just lovely people. He has got a lot of political problems. I had a good
time there, but I am not Cuban and I don't have to ask him for my visa.

I was a cultural emissary there and an honored guest. That was a different
kind of experience than you would have being a Cuban, wanting to express
your views in a free state. We tried to talk about things of mutual
interest. He invited me back, asking me to bring musicians and make music
with Cubans and take that music back to the US. We actually liked each
other. We had a certain rapport. And afterward I was told he learned from me
that music was one of Cuba's greatest commodities and exports. He didn't
understand how popular Cuban music is around the world.

DK: What do you think of the impact American music, the pop music machine,
the monoculturization?

MH: The world of cookie cutter phony music is being spammed. That is what
corporate rock is like. And the airwaves circle the globe. You have to get
out of the phony and search for the real stuff that really moves you. To a
nine year old, Britney Spears is a music experience. There is good in every
sort of music--I always believed that. Even in the corporate rock stuff,
there are people out there getting turned on to music. There are many musics
for any culture.

DK: If rock and roll and folk music have been the language of social change
in our culture, in this country and around the world, what would you say the
implications are for the expansion of world music around the world,
socially, politically, and culturally?

MH: The main thing is that you are able to hear other people's sensibilities
and be able to understand and appreciate them and be able to honor and enjoy
them. Music is the great calling card. It opens doors. That is one of the
major implications, finding out that music in Iran is not devil's music,
that it is beautiful music, there is beautiful music in all cultures. There
is some Bedouin music that is just sublime. In every culture there are
musicians of varying quality, whether it is a nomad or a city slicker. There
is a lot of bad music out there and a lot of good music too. Your job is to
search it out and find the music that resonates in you. That is what this is
all about.

DK: What does your crystal ball see in the next 10 years as to how music
will be created, distributed, listened to, and sold?

MH: Internet, internet file sharing, file sharing. But of course there will
be copyright laws in place where you won't be able to steal somebody's
personal property. If anybody is making money, it should be the artist, not
the people who cash in on other peoples' work. You have to pay for people's
music. Musicians have to pay the rent, put food on the table, and make a
living.


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