Da Capo
Best Music Writing 2004
Now in its landmark fifth year, Da Capo Best Music Writing has become one of the most eagerly awaited annuals of them all. Celebrating the year in music writing through a rich array of essays, missives, and musings on every style of music from rock to hip-hop to R&B to jazz and beyond, it’s essential reading for anyone who loves great music and accomplished writing.

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2004


Songcatchers: In Search
of the World's Music
Music is elemental, universal, instinctive—a mysterious pulse at the very heart of the human experience. But although we have made music for countless millennia, it’s been scarcely a century since we acquired the technology to capture and explore all its astonishing variety. This is the tale that unfolds in Songcatchers, at once a panorama of the world’s music and a vivid portrait of the pioneers who traveled far and wide to collect it.

CHECK OUT THE SONGCATCHERS FLASH FEATURE


Spirit into Sound



Mickey Hart, along with co-author and Professor of Ethnomusicology Fredric Lieberman, presents an original collection of quotes and commentary on the transformative power of music entitled Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music. Through world travels, close relationships with music icons and extensive research into the music archives at the Library of Congress, Hart has collected excerpts from individuals as diverse as Plato, Iggy Pop, Henry David Thoreau, John Lennon, Loretta Lynn, Timothy Leary, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Duke Ellington for his third book. In November, Hart will set out on a fifteen city tour to promote the book's national release.


CHECK OUT THE SPIRIT INTO SOUND SITE HERE


Planet Drum
Ranging from the "big bang" to the present, from Mesopotamia to Bunker Hill, Planet Drum uses hundreds of breathtaking images to take a panoramic look at the power and mystery of percussion and provide a stunning pictorial map of the world beat.

"Original and provocative thinking permeates this magnificently illustrated and fascinating volume."
--Walter Cronkite


    Drumming at the Edge
    of Magic
    Hart tells the compelling story of his quest to unlock the power, myths and legends of percussion. Part autobiography and personal memoir, Hart vividly accounts how from the beginning of time humanity has celebrated, buried the dead, gone to war, married and worshipped to the sound of drums, gongs, and rattles. In his conversations with the late Joseph Campbell, we see how the great mythologist encouraged Hart to pursue his quest to unlock the history and secrets of the drum, the instrument that has, since ancient times, taken humanity to the "edge of magic" and beyond.