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Whiz-bang, globe-trippin’ Grateful Dead drumming Mickey Hart has always gotten a kick out of traveling—conceptually as well as physically—and his latest venture with tabla master and longtime cohort Zakir Hussain certainly fits the profile. “It’s very Marco Polo-ish at this point,” he explains. “We’re trying to connect the earth with sound in a real way, kind of like a space probe. That’s basically the overview for this project—that and to get the old gang together.”
That “old gang” is the latest incarnation of the Grammy-winning Planet Drum percussion ensemble that took the world by storm over 15 years ago. Newly tagged as the Global Drum Project, with a self-titled album produced by Hart and Hussain, the group flexes just as much rhythmic muscle now as they did back in the day (just ask anyone who caught their wildly successful Planet Drum reunion tour in 2006). Puerto Rican conguero Giovanni Hidalgo and Nigerian talking drummer Sikiru Adepoju return to the fold, and they’re joined by percussionist/ vocalist Taufi q Qureshi, sitar player Niladari Kumar and
Dilshad Khan on sarangi. There’s even a “cameo” on the album via sampled vocals from another Planet Drum alum—the late great Baba Olatunji.
Hart says that new discoveries created the impetus for this fresh collaboration, and he bubbles over with enthusiasm for the “sophisticated machine processing we use on stage in real time. Global Drum has a new sonic quality that used to only be available in the studio. Now we have sound-on-sound, and we can do it on stage. As a result, the palette and the colors have increased a hundred-fold.”
On the eve of their fall 2007 U.S. tour, Hart and Hussain were primed for a discussion about all things rhythmic and technological. Hussain, in fact, was excited to talk about how his ancient tablas have been transformed for the better. “The technology being used has actually opened up a different way of listening to my instrument,” he points out. “It calls in a different way, and it has opened up other ways to respond, so there are new ways to address it.” Perhaps looking back on his childhood days in India, or imagining the landscape of his adopted home in northern California, Hussain evokes poetic images when contemplating his creative process. “There are mountains, valleys and rivers that were not explored on this age-old instrument. Now when I hit one skin on the tabla, I can feel each vibration, and those colors—you respond to them in a way that’s inspired.”
Compared to the effusive Hart, the more taciturn Hussain acts like an anchor he’s the methodical one who keeps the ship steady, seated behind his tables as if immovable. “He’s the grounding force,” Hart says with pride. This becomes obvious when the two are asked about the music on the new album. “Under One Groove,” for example, sounds one way on the album, but with all the gizmos going on stage, will it carry even a remote resemblance? “Absolutely,” says Hart, but as if to contradict himself, he adds, “I might use my short-wave FM radio when playing live—that certainly cannot be composed. So
there’s a bit of chaos and outlandishness in all this.” Then does Mickey become the man behind the curtain? This brings laughs from them both.
“This whole processing idea, this crazy idea is the brainchild of Mr. Hart,” Hussain says, jokingly assigning blame before warming to the subject. “Maybe it’s possible for us to take our instruments to a whole new sonic level—to find more in our instruments and look into the soul of the instruments. My job is to make available whatever sounds we come up with. But it’s very hard to keep up with all the sounds that Mr. Hart keeps creating. Pattern after pattern, I would get maybe eight of them as Mickey came up with hundreds.” Pausing, he adds with some certainty, “It’s still a work in progress, but now we know where we want to go with it.”
Mickey chimes in: “The tabla will become a balafon, or an instrument that hasn’t been born and has no name. It’s a combination, but it’s a new instrument we don’t have names for them, but we’ve identified them. It becomes a new topography or a new sonic soundscape. Formerly you just had delay and reverb, but the process now is composing a new sound. It started with Diga Rhythm Band and continued with Planet Drum, and now it’s part of our collective experience. It’s certainly an exploration—again, kind of like a space probe, and certainly rhythmic in nature. It’s very arabesque, with lots of ornamentation and lots of rococo. Each of us activates our triggers on stage, and there’s someone behind us who has a computer [to manipulate that further].
“On top of it all,” he continues, “there’s an enormous amount of improvisation. It’s something we generate as opposed to a machine. When we have loops [going] there are loops [still being created] we’ve taken some of our parts and replaced them with figures and samples, while we go somewhere else and play something else.”
“It’s real-time processing,” Hussain adds. “It may change sound, shape and form, but it’s still the tabla. The sonic experience is still firmly planted in the world of organic natural sound, and those sounds morph into something unbelievably unique that allows us to experience something sonically new every night.”
Hart says it all began with Diga Rhythm Band’s Diga (released in 1976), but actually his recorded collaborations with Hussain go back at least as far as Hart’s ethno-psychedelic rock album Rolling Thunder from 1972. Diga Rhythm Band itself had evolved out of Hussain’s Tal Vadya Rhythm Band, which he founded in1973. These were all Marco Polo-ish drummers, in a way, searching for their collective groove.
“Global Drum is now more of a groove-oriented band,” Hart insists, “[and yet] it’s more of a soloist’s band than Planet Drum was.” It’s surprising to consider that Planet Drum—a band stocked with such amazing soloists as Airto Moreira and Flora Purim—didn’t evolve, in Hart’s eyes, into as thoroughly well-oiled a groove machine as he might have envisioned, but as he puts it simply, “Planet Drum just didn’t have as much group playing as we do now.”
Referencing Diga and beyond, Hart buttresses his point by talking about the positive cumulative effect of countless collaborations. “It’s the result of all those years of experiences we’ve had,” he reflects. “You have to build trust, which is what we’ve
done. There’s an alchemy between us that’s not in the notes. Who knows where it will end up?” Thinking of a current example on the album, Hart goes on to say, “On a song like ‘Wood,’ the sound of the wood—that’s all actually made with wood, using a very sophisticated spatial effect with reverb and delay. The pieces of wood, which Zakir reminds me are very heavy and large, were collected from the deep forest. When I played the instrument, it revealed something to me: old-growth redwoods, hundreds and hundreds of years old.”
“Mickey understands the deep traditions that exist all over the world,” Hussain adds, perhaps considering Hart’s recent work with indigenous cultures, as well as his signifi- cant catalog of field recordings from around the world. “He has a deep reverence and respect that allows him to draw the line and not defile the sources where the instruments come from. His deep understanding of other cultures means he knows the protocol, and he works with that in a very special manner in order to move into something else. It’s all about that deep love and respect for the instruments and culture.”
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