by Manuelita Beck
Daily Lobo
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart says digital technology is the key to preserving indigenous music.
"It allows us to preserve this music forever - to preserve it, distribute it and repatriate it back to the cultures it comes from," Hart said.
He said the availability of digital music over the Internet can make global music more accessible.
"It doesn't matter if you preserve it if you can't give it away," Hart said.
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UNM will host the musician and author tonight as part of the 21st Century Speaker Series in Popejoy Hall at 8 p.m. His presentation tonight will focus on global music and the history of people who record it. These songcatchers are the subject of Hart's latest book, Songcatchers: In Search of the World's Music.
Songcatcher recordings are made outside of a traditional studio. A songcatcher is "a man or a woman who ventures into the field and records sound, whether it is crickets or back-porch music or classical music or opera," Hart said.
He has been involved with world music and songcatching for more than 35 years. When he started recording indigenous music on his own in the '60s, Hart said he brought those influences to the Dead.
"One of the things I've always done was to reach out to other cultures and to learn," he said. "Jerry Garcia called them my enthusiasms. Then my enthusiasms became my passions, my study and my life's work."
Hart said he became a songcatcher on a fluke, thanks to an attempt to record animals at the zoo during a full moon. From there, he saw the possibilities of recording outside of a studio.
"I just went out into the field and started recording what I found," he said. "It's what I call seat-of-the-pants recording."
In the late '60s, Hart began giving friends cassettes of his recordings for special occasions. Hart tried to sell a record of his songcatcher recordings in 1974.
"Nobody wanted one," he said. "Nobody thought it was really music. Finally, I kept just knocking on doors. Now it's a whole industry."
Hart, who is one half of the Dead's percussion duo known as the Rhythm Devils, said he was inspired by world music from a young age. His first discovery was a recording of African Pygmies he came across in his mother's record collection.
"I didn't find it - it found me in a way," Hart said. "It captured my imagination, and it didn't let go. I guess I was imprinted from an early age with this indigenous music."
Music is a way to create dialogue and understanding, he said. It shows how cultures are similar, and how they differ.
"Look what's happening now - the world is on fire," Hart said. "We're not making music together. If the Israelis and the Palestinians were making music together, they would still have differences, but they would also have common ground."
Next on Hart's agenda is composing music with the rest of the Dead, and performing during the band's upcoming Wave That Flag summer tour. On the stage, Hart will not only be a songcatcher, but a "catchee" as well, when fans continue the tradition of recording the Dead's concerts.
