You are now entering the Jewish Currents archive.
MICKEY HART AND THE GRATEFUL DEAD
Lawrence Bush
September 3, 2017
Percussionist Mickey Hart (Michael Steven Hartman) joined the Grateful Dead as one of the band’s two drummers (the other was Bill Kreutzmann) on this date in 1967. He left the Dead in 1971 and then returned in 1974, remaining with the band until they dissolved in 1995, following guitarist Jerry Garcia’s early death. Hart is an expert in world music and ethnomusicology who has produced several books as well as the Grammy Award-winning album, Planet Drum. In 2010, he debuted “Rhythms of the Universe,” a composition based on astrophysical data. It will be part of a musical history of the universe that reflects such phenomena as the Big Bang, quasars, and supernovae through rhythm and sound. Hart is active with the American Folklife Center and the Library of Congress’ National Recorded Sound Preservation Board. You can see a 2015 interview with Mickey about this project here.
“Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythm machine, that’s what we are.”
—Mickey Hart
Watch a 2009 interview with Mickey Hart and the members of the Global Drum Project for NatGeoMusic:
Lawrence Bush edited Jewish Currents from 2003 until 2018. He is the author of Bessie: A Novel of Love and Revolution and Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, among other books. His new volume of illustrated Torah commentaries, American Torah Toons 2, is scheduled for publication this year.
Recently Featured
Also by Lawrence Bush
History
How Jewish Currents Covered the Soviet Jewry Movement
Even once the magazine accepted the evidence of Soviet antisemitism, it continued to distrust the politics of the mainstream campaign.
Lawrence Bush
Blog-Shmog
JEWDAYO Rocks: Jewish Rock and Roll Dates for August
Lawrence Bush