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 The "Godfather of World Music" Mickey Hart has spent the past 30years pushing innovation to the limit. An ex-Air Force band drummer, he created the wild percussivesoundtrack to the film Apocalypse Now. His style of mixing influences fromall over the globe was a defining factor of The Grateful Dead, the mostsuccessful "hippie rock" band in history, which he joined in 1967. During his 28 years with The Dead, Hart continued to seek out hiscounterparts from the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and beyond. In1990 he formed Planet Drum, a sort of touring collective which incorporatedsome of the greatest drummers alive--Babatunde Olatunji, Zakir Hussain andAirto Moreira. The album Planet Drum won the first ever Grammy Award forWorld Music, and remains a definitive milestone of the advance of worldmusic in the marketplace, not to mention serious rhythms! Planet Drum, thealbum inspired him to write two bestseller books, Drumming at the Edge ofMagic and Planet Drum.
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Mickey Hart
Never without a project in the limelight and another in the oven,Mickey produces artists like Hamza El-Din, through his "World" series onRykodisk and continues to write. His most recent book Spirit Into Sound, abook of the most diverse music quotations includes an accompanying cd withtop world music artists. The year 2000 brought a hankering for the rockin' and rollin' ofhis Grateful Dead days. Enter The Mickey Hart Band. A seamless fusion of many of the genres Mickey has pursued over theyears, the MHB counts among its numbers industry heavyweights like pianistVince Welnick and drummer Rick Schlosser. Cuban singer Bobi Cespedes,founder of Conjunto Cespedes, packs a punch with her tight salsa and son-influenced vocal style. Another formidable Cuban, Nengue Hernandez joinsMickey on percussion. Get ready to kick up some dust!