Anyone who has absorbed an authentic Grateful Dead show, back in the day, has spent a little time in spaces where the laws of what we like to call reality appears to be at one remove. This is a phenomenon that was produced by sound, and it was no accident. This is particularly evident when talking to Mickey Hart. There is no doubt that he has spent a good part of his life in places that can’t be found on any map, psychic territories carved out with rhythm. His quest has brought him to every corner of the planet, traversing jungles and deserts, recorder in hand, to track down the ur-sound. He has sent teams of researchers out to delve into the ancient wisdom and the latest discoveries about sound and rhythm. It is not hard to think of him as the Carl Jung of drums, speaking to him is like traveling to an outpost in the collective unconscious.

From this outpost he has managd to achieve things in a rather hefty way, like bringing the healing powers of music and rhythm to the forefront of modern science, or participating in the foundation of not one, but two massive genres of music. In addition to the ubiquitous world of Jam, he played an essential role in bringing World Music to a global audience.

T. Virgil Parker: I had a poetry professor in the UK who said that he could not understand William Carlos Williams’ cadences until he literally stood on an American street and heard the distinct rhythmical patterns here. You more than anyone else seem qualified to answer this question: How much of a culture comes with its rhythms?

Mickey Hart: All of if. Rhythm is life, and all about life. Each culture’s rhythms are both culturally specific and cosmically specific. Our universe was born of rhythm: the Big Bang. It is a vibratory universe that we live in. Anything that vibrates has a rhythm. Music is a great metaphor in that respect, and it is a great connector to the origin; the seed sound of the universe; the big bang, the primal connector. As a result, music connects you to the infinite. Rhythm is certainly culturally specific, but more a planetary or cosmic connection that we’re dealing with. We’re embedded in a world rhythm. We’re creatures of rhythm scanning for other rhythms, everywhere.

TVP: People have noted that Rock and Roll, consciousness expansion, and the occult evolved together, pretty much at the same time. Did bringing non-Western rhythms into mainstream Western Culture play a role in that?

MH: It is great for understanding another culture. Bo Diddley brought Quali rhythms into American popular music in the 50’s. Suddenly you have the most potent rhythm of another culture. You discover the sensibilities of that culture from the ground up. That’s where it all comes from; thousands of years of the evolution of that culture. Then with the new sound you have an entrainment, a flowing together that becomes greater than the individual parts when it merges. What you’re talking about here is music and trance.

TVP: Yes-

MH: -Trance and altered states of consciousness, whether it be psychoactive or driven by auditory experiences. Rhythm will get you that. That’s what it is for. And there is evidence of art depicting altered states of conscious 19,000 years ago, as well as in Mesoamerican cultures. The need for consciousness expansion must have been there since we crawled out of the swamps. And art has always been part of it, there with it, and attributed to the altered state. The Grateful Dead did not invent that, I assure you.

TVP: No, but you brought it into a culture where ecstatic experience was very badly needed.

MH: Some might think that, I do.

TVP: You have done more than anyone to demonstrate the relationship between healing and rhythm.

MH: Yes.

TVP: There must have been a personal experience that got you thinking about researching that.

MH: My grandmother had Alzheimer Disease. She wasn’t talking at the time, hadn’t for several months. I played the drum for her for a long time, kind of to say goodbye. All the sudden she came back into the light. She shook her finger at me and smiled at me and said my name. I couldn’t believe it. I almost stopped playing. She was doing all the things she hadn’t done for months. I decided there must have been something to that. Aside from seeing thousands of people go into ecstatic experience at shows, this was personal. It was a very unusual, powerful experience that gave me the idea that rhythm can be used in medicinal ways. That started it. Now, we know that certain parts of the brain light up when certain rhythms are played. And we now know that the motor impaired, including Alzheimer patients, with rhythmic stimuli, can come out of it for a while, at least. And it may have some preventative properties. Rhythmic therapy as well as music therapy have become real. HMO’s in many states are actually underwriting prescriptions for music and sound therapy. It is now recognized by legitimate science, by insurance companies. They’re uncovering the neurology of music.

TVP: You’ve worked directly with congress to spearhead this concept.

MH: I testified in front of the Senate in 1991, and tried to kick start this idea here in the West. W got $1,000,000 in research grants from Harry Reid, on the Subcommittee on Aging. We needed to prove that music is part of the healing process, which is now fact. Harry Reid was a believer, as was Oliver Sacks, the doctor depicted in the Awakenings movie. Harry Reid had read one of my books and called. We went to the Senate and laid it on them, and Harry proved to be a great visionary at the time.

TVP: I have to say that you’ve made better, more productive use of your time than any Rock Star that comes to mind.

MH: I’m not a Rock Star, I’m a musician, a drummer. That’s the way I like it.

TVP: You’re transcending the image.

MH: It isn’t what you really are, it is just a way that people perceive you. I do what I have to do and what I think is appropriate and what makes for a better world. The world needs as much care as it can possible have. Music is one of the great caretakers. It’s real medicine, not only for me personally, but look at all the millions of people who use it as their lifeline. People really do use it as a spiritual tool. It is a sacred dimension. It operates here in the profane world, and yet has hat sacredness to it. It’s completely invisible. It’s so mysterious. It is such a pleasure to be involved with it every day. It is a way of life, not something I go to a concert for. I enjoy playing for myself daily, and having a personal experience as well as a large public performance, which is slightly different.

TVP: There are drum circles in every city in America now.

MH: The prophecy has been realized. It’s fascinating to have seen it from the beginning. We just had 4,750 or so drummers up at Wavy Gravy’s Place, a world record, all drumming at the same time. It was interesting to watch these rhythms from around the world come together in the hands of these white kids in a field. Almost 5,000 of them trying to get ahold of these trance rhythms, the archaic rising within each of these people. It was fascinating to look at because I know the history of it and how it all came here. Drum circles in every city, it’s happening in a lot of neighborhoods too, people sharing drum circles.

TVP: I know you’re out of time, but a lot of our readers wanted to know what kind of excitement you had planned for the Gathering of the Vibes.

MH: I have an astonishing lineup for that show. We’re really going to push it to the next level.