Spirit Into Sound

Mickey Hart is a rhythm proselytizer. He’s been sounding-off from the percussion pulpit since writing his first book, Drumming at the Edge of Magic in 1990. Hart’s Planet Drum–the book and the album–set forth an army of percussion acolytes. With Spirit into Sound, Hart has another accompanying book and a gentler music that looks toward the melodic side of percussion. Although there are a few guests, including tabla player Zakir Hussain, Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, and sarangi master Ustad Sultan Khan, it’s Mickey Hart and vocalist/percussionist Rebeca Mauleon who dominate the album. They play melodic percussion instruments and/or electronic samples of African balafon, Brazilian berimbau, and steel drums. For a drummer as worldly as Hart, Spirit into Sound is surprisingly naïve in its childlike rhythms. Mauleon’s wordless chants make Spirit into Sound sound like a global glossolalia nursery rhyme. This isn’t an album for the rhythmatists of Hart’s core following, but a more intimate affair. –John Diliberto