Global Drum Project

New Global Drum Project Available October 2nd

ccasal — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:08:34 -0400

Mickey Hart's three decades as the innovative percussion engine of the Grateful Dead, earned him Rock & Roll Hall of Fame status and worldwide notoriety. Years of constant touring also afforded him a platform for introducing his lifelong interest in multicultural sounds (rooted in childhood exposure to his mother's collection of early Folkways ethnographic recordings) to the American public; he presented on the Dead's performance stage such diverse artists as the great Yoruban drum legend Babatunde Olatunji, Brazil's multi-talented Airto Moreira, Sudanese oud master Hamza El Din, and Nigerian talking drum ace Sikiru Adepoju.

Photo by: John Werner

Hart's longtime friend and collaborator Zakir Hussain is one of the world's giants of Indian classical music, a virtuoso percussionist globally acknowledged as the master of his art. Son of the fabled Ustad Allah Rakha, he made his debut with Ravi Shankar in 1970, and has recorded with George Harrison, Tito Puente, Van Morrison, Pharoah Saunders and many more - and co-founded fusion supergroup Shakti with guitarist John McLaughlin. His prolific career is studded with awards and honors, including being the youngest musician ever to be awarded the title of Padma Shri by the government of India.

The groundbreaking 1991 Planet Drum united Hart, Hussain, Olatunji, Adepoju, Moreira, Puerto Rican master conguero Giovanni Hidalgo and others in a sparkling fusion of global percussion, winning the first-ever Grammy for World Music - and soaring to #1 on Billboard's world music chart, where it stayed for an unprecedented 26 weeks.

Photo by: John Werner

Global Drum Project once again finds the all-stars collaborating, in a collection of tranced-out, mesmerizing grooves and elegant electronic programming. Performers include Planet Drum alumni Giovanni Hidalgo on Latin percussion and Sikiru Adepoju on talking drum, as well as Taufiq Qureshi on percussion and vocals, Niladari Kumar on sitar, Dilshad Khan on sarangi. The late Babatunde Olatunji is heard as well, in sampled “guest” vocals.

Photo by: John Werner

Coinciding with this release, previously unavailable digital reissues of essential Mickey Hart back-catalog -- Diga Rhythm Band, At The Edge, Planet Drum, Mystery Box, and Supralingua -- will become available via the iTunes Music Store, with physical re-issues planned for 2008.

Click here to purchase the new Global Drum Project CD in the Dead.net
Store.

Mickey Hart/ Global Drum Project photos2

ccasal — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:02:54 -0400

Mickey Hart/ Global Drum Project photos1

ccasal — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:01:29 -0400

Mickey Hart/ Global Drum Project photos

ccasal — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:56:09 -0400

In the Zone with Global Drum Project…

PatRhino — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:46:36 -0400

Tabla master Zakir Hussain onstage with Global Drum Project
at the Warfield Theater, SF, 12/1/06.
Photo: David W. Clark

The ever-busy Mickey Hart is also hard at work at his studio on a new CD by Global Drum Project, which in its current configuration is a mind-blowing quartet of percussion giants: Mickey, Sikuru, Zakir Hussain and Giovanni Hidalgo. “We’re reaching the end of the recording,” Mickey comments, “and we’re hoping to tour in the fall. It’s been great getting the guys together again — stirring it up and creating some new rhythms for a new day.”

Of course, all four of these guys have played together often through the years on various projects of Mickey’s — he and Zakir go all the way back to the Diga Rhythm Devils in the early ’70s — but it’s been a while since there’s been a conscious effort to create another Global Drum Project unit. “It feels really fresh,” he says. “That’s the good thing about doing it every once in while and not working it to death — not going out and touring twice a year or whatever. This way, there’s still the freshness of getting together and discovering what we can do. You know me — in the studio, I’m a first-take guy. I like freshness and spontaneity. I like to get in there and just start playing and rolling tape on everything; going after it and getting in the zone on that kind of percussive level. It’s quite a challenge to get in the zone with guys of that caliber, because it’s like an über-zone of rhythmic dexterity,” he laughs.

How do the tunes, such as they are, come about? “Some of them start out with just me and Zakir just playing,” he says. “As you know, I have a rather formidable array of percussive devices, or tools, and I lay ’em all out and we just go at ‘em. The room is ‘hot’ — it’s miked everywhere. What I did is I planned a few days of activities; it was like rhythm camp! Sometimes I’ll give the engineer instructions to once in a while to bring up some sort of process [reverbs, delays, etc.] in our ears so we have a motif for the evening’s festivities, or that day and evening’s festivities. And then we just go and see where the music takes us. And if it’s working right, you go to places that are new and unique.

“The thing with the four of us is — just like with me and Billy — we share a common sense of how to render a groove; the best way to create a compelling pulse. Everyone is comfortable with each other’s way of doing that, just like me and Bill. And you know when you’ve found the groove; it’s a very obvious thing. You’re able to have rhythmic conversations within it and it feels relaxed and comfortable — even if it’s actually very intense.

“We went out on the road and played up and down the [West] Coast to see if we could pull off this vision of the group, which is a four-piece percussion band, and I think we did — the reviews were stunning; all the feedback has been extremely positive. It’s not exactly like the original Global Drum Project, which was sort of a virtuoso’s vehicle. This is more a groove trip, and of course these days there are electronics in it. We even have an operator working the sound design — Jonah Sharpe — and we’re able to call up the memory banks of my percussion collection, which I’ve digitized. Between the electronics and this incredible memory bank, we can paint in colors we could never could before. So a four-piece percussion group can sound enormous, using spatial effects and all these other fun kind of things. We’re trying to take it to the next dimension.”

Mickey Hart - Furthur Festival

Analise Dubner — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:03:03 -0400

Furthur Festival. Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project. Portland Meadows, Portland, OR

Mickey Hart - Furthur Festival

Analise Dubner — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:01:11 -0400

Furthur Festival. Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project. Portland Meadows, Portland, OR

Furthur Festival - Mickey Hart

Analise Dubner — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:58:57 -0400

Furthur Festival. Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project. Portland Meadows, Portland, OR

Mickey Hart - Furthur Festival

Analise Dubner — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:41:37 -0400

Furthur Festival. Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project, Blockbuster Pavilion, Charlotte, NC

Mickey Hart - Furthur Festival

Analise Dubner — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:40:00 -0400

Furthur Festival. Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project, Blockbuster Pavilion, Charlotte, NC.

Mickey Hart - Furthur Festival

Analise Dubner — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:38:09 -0400

Furthur Festival. Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project, Blockbuster Pavilion, Charlotte, NC.

Mickey Hart - Furthur Festival

Analise Dubner — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:35:29 -0400

Furthur Festival. Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project, Blockbuster Pavilion, Charlotte, NC

Global Drum Project - Furthur Festival 1997

Analise Dubner — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:19:23 -0400

Furthur Festival. Global Drum Project. Fiddler\'s Green Amphitheatre, Englewood, CO.

Mickey Hart - Global Drum Project, Back, Rykodisc, Nancy Nimoy

Jonathan Lane — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:04:46 -0400

Mickey Hart - Global Drumn Project. Released by: Rykodisc. Cover Art: Nancy Nimoy. Animal Spirits Concept Courtesy of: Willard H. Dow II. Perhaps the most stellar group of percussionists ever essembled. Won a grammy for Best World Music Album in 1991.