“The drummer is an inspirer, a leader, and a prophet. The blow of the drumstick translates itself not merely into sound, but into a spiritual reverberation. The excitement we feel when we hear the drumbeat tells us this is the skeletal key that opens the door into the realm of the spirit.”

Mickey Hart from his book “Spirit into Sound – The Magic of Music”

For ever thirty years Mickey Hart was a drummer and percussionist for the Grateful Dead. But did you know that he’s the author of four books, that he has numerous solo recordings, that he’s a passionate musicologist and a member of the board of trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress? And most important ly, that he’s a devoted family man and an all around great guy?

Always someone who is constantly looking ahead, Mickey’s newest musical odyssey is called “Global Drum Project.” Here he has once again teamed up with Zakir Hussain, the internationally known percussion virtuoso from India. Zakir has been a part of every one of Mickey’s solo records and “Global Drum Project,” which will be released in early October, is the masterpiece recording that these two percussion greats have been working towards for all these years. Also included on the disc is the Nigerian talking drum master Sikiru Adepoju along with the Puerto Rican conga, bongo, and tambale great Giovanni Hidalgo. These four men are the core of a band that is currently touring the country in what is being called a joyful celebration of percussion and rhythm. Their tour brings them to the beautiful Jorgensen Center for Performing Arts on the campus of the University of Connecticut on Friday October 12th. This phone interview took place in late August and Mickey was his usual articulate, intelligent, and passionate self!

BH – Hey Mickey how’s everything?

MH – “Life is good. The rhythm is right.”

BH – Do you still get excited about the release of a new CD?

MH – “You know I was just talking to my daughter about that very thing last night. It’s funny you should mention it because I hadn’t seen the CD until the day before yesterday. And you know, you can make the CD but once you see it with the liner notes and it all comes together in one package, it becomes very real. And I found my heart beating faster just holding it and looking at it. I was very proud of it and I was getting excited. My daughter is fourteen and she says ‘Dad that’s really great that you still get excited about this,’ and I said ‘of course, this is what I do and it’s so important.’ So yeah, I’m up! My juices are flowing.”

BH – You’re once again working with Zakir Hussain. Everything I’ve read and heard about him is pretty impressive.

MH – “Impressive is a good way of putting it because he’s the maestro. He’s probably the most advanced rhythmist on the planet. It’s about as good as you get.”

BH – I read that his father, Ustad Alla Rakha, was a great percussionist. Did you know his father and is he still alive?

MH – “His father passed on but his father was my teacher and responsible for much of the rhythmic dexterity that I brought into the Grateful Dead. That was his dad’s influence.”

BH – Tell me about Sikiru Adepoju and Giovanni Hidalgo who are such integral parts of this recording.

MH – “Sikiru is like Zakir’s counterpart only from the world of Latin percussion. He’s kind of a deity in that world as Zakir is in Indian classical music. They’re considered in that realm. There are the great professionals and then there are guys like Zakir, Sikiru, and Giovanni. Their technique and their prowess and their ability on their instrument are beyond comparison. As far as humans go, that’s the most advanced you’ll hear.”

BH – Mickey when I was preparing for this interview I went back and listened to some of your previous work. With “At The Edge” and “Planet Drum” I thought you had more of a lush sound and you incorporated sounds of nature in those recordings. I thought “Supralingua” was a more aggressive record. But I think “Global Drum Project” is more melodic and hypnotic with a softer tone. Do you agree?

MH – “Yes that’s very perceptive. That’s what we were going for. We were going for the trance. We were going for the zone. We were going for the feeling that we’ve been nurturing all these years. All those CD’s just kind of built to this. It’s a logical progression if you listen to all of the work that Zakir and I have done and Giovanni and Sikiru. This is a perfect version of 2007 of us and what’s going through our veins.”

BH – What’s the writing process like within the group? How do the songs come together?

MH – “Well it varies. Usually one of us initiates some kind of rhythmic statement, some kind of an idea. And then the others join in and it becomes a collaboration. This one was mostly created by me and Zakir because we live close by and Giovanni and Sikiru are all over the world. So it was mainly composed by Zakir and me. And we really love each other and trust each other and it’s kind of a meeting of cultures and minds and souls and hearts. We have a certain common feeling that emerges when we play together. Zakir could start something or I could start something and bring it to him. It’s like ‘what do you think of this?’ ‘OK, how about that?’ I like to keep it real loose in that respect, creatively speaking.”

BH – Let’s talk about the tour. You played the Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport recently but that wasn’t with these guys was it?

MH – “I got two bands I work with. One is a western kind of song band with lyrics and rock and roll and that’s the band that played the Vibes. Global Drum Project didn’t play the Vibes. We played a tryout tour earlier this year just to check out this new technology. We did about ten shows on the west coast but that’s as far as we took it. We just wanted to take it out on a maiden voyage just to see how it would go because this is very complicated technologically, this band. It’s very advanced. We’re using extreme techniques that normally are reserved just for the studio. We’re doing it live in real time. Surround sound and spatial processing that we’ve never really attempted, and I don’t think anyone has ever attempted live. So we just didn’t want to go out on a national tour and we didn’t have a record then. Of course we have the CD so we’re going out on a more extensive tour, a six week tour.”

BH – In Connecticut you’ll be playing at a spectacular venue called the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on the UConn campus. Are you picking venues that best compliment your sound?

MH – “These venues are state of the art venues that sound really good because it’s a real challenge because there are acoustic instruments mixing with electronic instruments. So you have one foot in the archaic world of percussion, drums, membranes, and the other foot firmly planted in the electronic zone. So the band is a fusion in that way and also culturally. You know between us we got about two hundred and fifty years percussive experience in this band. This band is very unique in that way because we’re all basically percussionists. And we’re bringing it all together to make music that people can dance to and people can appreciate. It contains much more melody than we’ve ever had.”

BH – How’s your work been coming along with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress? I know you’ve been actively involved with digitizing and preserving the Center’s vast music collection. Is that something that could ever be completed?

MH – “It will probably never be completed. It’s a race you can never win. But you’re going to run as hard as you can because there’s so much music to be digitized. It’s only so fast that the capable staff at the Library of Congress can complete the task. I mean there are many different mediums on which we’ve recorded sound and they’re decomposing. So you have to grab them off of that medium and digitize them before the originals decompose. So that’s what my main mission at the Library is.”

BH – It’s been over four years since the publication of your book “Songcatchers.” Are there any new book projects in the works?

MH – “Yeah I’m always working on projects and I’m always working on books but right now I’m trying to focus on performance. I’m getting back to the need to play and the need to drum. There’s a time for research and writing and then there’s a time to get out and make rhythm. So this is that cycle. It goes in cycles.”

BH – The tour isn’t really that long. Have you thought about what you’ll be doing when the tour ends? Will there be another tour?

MH – “We’ll keep going out. I assume this tour will be very successful. The CD is good music. People love the CD, the people who have heard it and are starting to review it. It will be very successful. Any date on the stage with Zakir and Giovanni and Sikiru is a good day for me. It’s a high point in my life. I’m really close to these guys. We really share similar visions and it’s an honor to be in the presence of these great drummers. You couldn’t get any better if you’re going to pick drummers to play with. This is the all-star team. This is the Olympics!”

BH – I’m sure they say the same thing about you Mickey.

MH – “Well they’re in their own class and I really respect them tremendously. We all do what we do well. And there’s no real competition in that respect. Everybody is very secure in whom they are and everybody really loves each other. We all like each other. We get along. We laugh our way across the country. We play our way across the country. We drum in the bus going down the road and we just really enjoy each other’s company. So what that makes for is group mind. And once you have group mind and you have the skill at this level – kick back! Now you’re pushing the envelope. You’re talking about new music and that’s what I’m really interested in. I’m not interested in recreating another version of Grateful Dead music. I’ll play Grateful Dead songs in the other band, the Mickey Hart Band, and enjoy it from time to time. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life covering Grateful Dead songs.”

BH – You always seem to be looking ahead. You’ve been that way for as long as I’ve known you.

MH – “I don’t want to plunder the Grateful Dead music or anything like that. I’ve done it so well back when I did it. For me it’s kind of like breathing fumes as opposed to nectar. I remember how it used to be in the Grateful Dead. We all used to look at each other and say ‘yeah tonight I really learned something. Boy that was really great.’ And that’s what happens with this band. You come off the stage and you learn something. Everyone is each other’s teacher. And it’s new and exciting. My relation with Zakir goes back to 1971 when he was a kid. And Giovanni and Sikiru 1990 from the original ‘Planet Drum.’ So we’ve put on a lot of miles and there’s been a lot of rhythm shared between us over the years. And it tells as the performance happens because a lot of this is improvisational. There is composition so you will recognize the songs of course. But none of us are studio musicians. We don’t play other people’s music necessarily. And we don’t play what somebody else wants us to play. We’re not for hire in that kind of way. So it’s a very free spirit that you feel on the stage and that makes for magic. You see everybody here – Zakir, Sikiru, Giovanni, they’re soloists. They go out and have their own magnificent solo careers all over the world. But this group, they’ve agreed to come together to create a groove, a feeling, an energy together as opposed to the maestro solo thing. There will be solos but that’s not what this vehicle is all about. If you want to see that you could see Zakir do his solo concers, they’re magnificent but this is not like that. Or Giovanni when he plays in his master’s series but this is not that. And so you won’t be hearing tabla solos all night. You won’t be hearing conga solos all night or drum solos all night. But you’ll be hearing deep drumming grooves all night and you’ll be going into the zone with us I hope. That’s what I’ve always liked. I’ve always like the ensemble. I always loved the groove. When you can get a bunch of guys that have the same mindset you just go with it. I feel very fortunate to be part of this.”

BH – It’s certainly nice to hear such excitement in your voice. For an old deadhead like me it’s nice to see that Phil Lesh and Bob Weir are also doing well with their bands. It looks like everything has turned out ok.

MH – “Yeah it’s really beautiful that we can all realize our musical destinies because that’s what brought us together, this fierce need to create music. In that respect it’s similar. The three of us are going out there trying to realize our dreams. And we had a dream called the Grateful Dead and it was a great dream. It became a great reality but that’s over now.”

BH – I also find it amazing that when I see you in October I’ll be sitting in an audience where the majority of fans are too young to have ever seen Jerry Garcia. Isn’t that amazing?

MH – “It is amazing and I don’t take it lightly but that really just tells you the power of music, of Grateful Dead music and Bob Hunter’s lyrics and all of our energies coming together in some cathartic way. Once you know how to do that you can do it somewhere else. It’s not impossible. From time to time it happens to all of us, Phil’s band and Ratdog, that we get that great feeling. You know there might be a time when we come together again but right now I think our own personal destiny is right there in front of us and I can’t deny it. I just love this thing so much playing with Zakir, Giovanni, and Sikiru and I’m almost blinded by it. It’s very hot.”

For more information about Mickey Hart simply log on to his website at www.mickeyhart.net. Or better yet, come out and see him on October 12th at the Jorgensen Auditorium where life will be good and the rhythm will be right.