Has it been 25 years already? Back in 1991, Grateful Dead percussionist/Rhythm Devil Mickey Hart released his seminal album Planet Drum to wild success and critical acclaim. The album, which featured world-renowned percussionists Zakir Hussain, Vikku Vinayakram, Babatunde Olatinji, Sikiru Adepoju, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, and Giovanni Hidalgo, won the first ever World Music Grammy after spending twenty-six weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts. The subsequent tour for the album took the drummers around the world playing to packed audiences on a nightly basis.
This was a groundbreaking project, bringing together some of the greatest percussionists of our time. Now, Planet Drum is being re-released as a special 25th anniversary edition in December 2016, including three new tracks that Hart arranged with his frequent collaborator Hussain. The three tracks include “Sea of Showers,” which features Flora Purim and Babatunde Olatunji singing over a rhythm base that includes sounds ranging from a bullroarer to chimes, “Throat Games,” which is an all-globe scat-a-thon and “The Spot,” which is a sonic homage to the water gods.
Hart had this to say about the Planet Drum project:
“This experience was about people having the will to do it and wanting to come together…because many times, people from different cultures are reticent of getting together with powerful people from other cultures; it’s hard to share rhythm for some musicians who are tradition-bound.  In this case, these folks, they weren’t culturally bound by their rhythms; they were in the right place at the right time for a new gumbo, a new way of coming together, egoless, in the spirit, to have fun and record a classic 20th century gamelan, which has always been the carrot for me.  I always wanted to ring that bell.”
In other exciting news, the label behind Planet Drum, Universal Music Group, has announced that Hart is entering the studio to put together an album of new material, with a the album set to be released at some point in 2017.
Keep an eye out for more information on the 25th anniversary edition of Planet Drum and Mickey Hart’s forthcoming new album. You can head to Hart’s website for more details.