Drumming at the Edge of Magic a Journey Into the Spirit of Percussion
Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead has an almost religious approach to playing the drums : In the way that others define themselves as a Catholic, a Protestant or a Jew, Hart defines himself as a drummer. “Exploring the spirit side of the drum has been the major adventure of my adulthood, if not my whole life, ” he writes in `Drumming at the Edge of Magic.’
As Hart recounts it, drumming has always had a spiritual and physical effect on him, including various degrees of ecstasy and trance.
Touched by what he perceived as the primal power of the drums, he set out to collect and study the folklore of percussion instruments, especially in regard to their religious and ceremonial uses.
Although it often aspires to be a primer on the anthology of drumming, `Drumming at the Edge’ succeeds more as a history of his obsession than
as a history of the drum. Among the book’s most engaging segments are his recollections of playing parade drums as a child; experimenting with fellow drummer Bill Kreutzmann in the Grateful Dead; playing the `tar,’ an African hand drum, with Egyptian musicians all night around a desert campfire; and attempting to replicate the `chilla,’ a ritual retreat of Indian drummers, by drumming nonstop for four days.
While convincing in relating his obsessions, Hart is on shakier ground when he tries to substantiate the mythic and metaphysical properties of the drum. In Hart’s cosmic scheme, the universe is built on noise and pulse rhythm and all drumming is an attempt to touch the universal. When Hart listens to rock & roll drumming, he hears the echo of Africa’s Yoruba drummers worshiping an earth goddess thousands of years ago. For Hart, each drum has a personality sometimes malevolent, sometimes good that drummers must coax out and meet; he describes gongs in his own collection as having monks and tigers “in them.” There are times when Hart’s absolute conviction is the spirituality of the drums is itself inspiring; at other times it seems so private as to be incomprehensible to anyone else.
Although a personal account, `Drumming at the Edge of Magic’ is not an autobiography. Yet it effectively uses Hart’s search for his own father, an accomplished drummer and con man whom he never knew as a child, as a counterpoint to his search for knowledge about the drums. Fans of the Grateful Dead should be forewarned that Hart has very little to say here about the group’s music.
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