Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.

History[link]

The Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Asch sought to record and document sounds and music from everywhere in the world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. In 1964, Asch helped MGM Records start Verve Folkways Records which evolved in 1967 into Verve Forecast Records.^[1] The albums are very diverse in content including traditional and contemporary music from around the world; spoken word, poetry, and multi-lingual instructional recordings; and field recordings of communities, individuals, and natural sounds. It was also an early proponent of the singers and songwriters, such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly, who formed the center of the American folk music revival.

The label became very influential on a generation of folk singers because of its release of a great number of old-time recordings by re-discovered performers from the 1920s and 1930s like Dock Boggs and Clarence Ashley, as well as contemporary performers like the New Lost City Ramblers. The Anthology of American Folk Music originally appeared on the Folkways label, as did the accompanying album to The Country Blues by Samuel Charters. Folkways was also one of the earliest companies to release albums of world music, including the Music of the World's Peoples collection edited by Henry Cowell. They also released many spoken word albums, and other unusual repertoire. The albums always came with a pull-out leaflet containing extensive sleeve notes.

Smithsonian[link]

The Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C. acquired Asch's Folkways recordings and business files after his death in 1986. This acquisition was initiated by Ralph Rinzler, of the Smithsonian, before Asch's death and completed by the Asch Family to ensure the sounds and artists would be preserved for future generations. As a result, it was agreed to continue Asch's policy that all of the 2,168 titles would stay in print indefinitely regardless of market sales. The Smithsonian Folkways website uses the internet to make the recordings available as streaming samples, DRM-free digital downloads in MP3 and lossless FLAC format, and on CDs via mail order.

A complete set of the Folkways recordings was also donated to the University of Alberta where Michael Asch, Moe Asch's son, was an anthropology professor; FolkwaysAlive, a joint initiative between the University and the Smithsonian, is involved in digitization and archiving of the collection as well as maintaining a research center and sponsoring student research scholarships and an annual concert series.^{[2] [3]}

Since acquiring Folkways, the Smithsonian has expanded Asch's collection by adding several other record labels, including Cook, Monitor, Fast Folk, Dyer-Bennet, and Paredon. They have also released over 300 new recordings.

The mission statement of Smithsonian Folkways states that their mission "is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document 'people's music.'" They "are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound", and that "musical and cultural diversity contributes to the vitality and quality of life throughout the world." By making these recordings available, they intend "strengthen people's engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others."^[4]

Smithsonian Folkways has also produced or co-produced a number of radio series based on the Folkways collections. "The Folkways Collection" and "Sounds to Grow On" are co-produced with CKUA radio; "Tapestry of the Times" was co-produced by WYPR radio; and "Sound Sessions" was produced by the Smithsonian and broadcast on WAMU radio. "Sounds to Grow On" is hosted by Michael Asch, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and the son of Moses Asch.

See also[link]

• Moses Asch
• Smithsonian Folkways

References[link]

1. ^ "Verve/Folkways: Marriage of Folk and Pop", Billboard magazine, January 21, 1967
2. ^ FolkwaysAlive website
3. ^ Smithsonian Folkways: Sounds to Grow On
4. ^ Smithsonian Folkways website

External links[link]

• Official Smithsonian Folkways Recordings site
• FolkwaysAlive site at the University of Alberta
• "Tapestry of the Times" podcast
• "Sounds to Grow On" podcast
• "The Folkways Collection" podcast
• "Sound Sessions" podcast

Ronald Clyne (December 28, 1925 – 2006) was an American freelance designer and graphic artist best known for creating over 500 covers for Folkways Records during the more than three-decade lifetime of his independent company from 1948–1986.^[1]

Early career[link]

After beginning to draw at the age of 8, Clyne sold his first drawing at the age of 15 to Ray Palmer of Fantastic Adventures and Amazing Stories. It was published in the November 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures. This led him to doing cover art for several fanzines of the era, such as Bob Tucker’s Le Zombie, and Al Ashley’s Nova. A few years later, he would do work for Fan Slants, Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fanvariety and a great number of other fantasy and horror books and magazines - prominent amongst them being “The Arkham Sampler”.^[2]

Clyne's first published book jacket illustration was for Jack Snow's collection Dark Music and Other Spectral Tales (1947). This jacket originally had Ray Bradbury's name printed on the lower panel beneath the art, as Bradbury was to have provided a foreword, but after Bradbury reneged (due to the publisher insisting on including material by Snow which was juvenilia that Bradbury considered "patently unpublishable"), a bar of ink was printed over Bradbury's name on all the jackets, which had already been printed.

Clyne designed a number book jackets for August Derleth's Arkham House during the first two decades of that publisher's history.

Folkways designs[link]

In the early years of Folkways Records (1948), founder Moses Asch felt that the cover designs should marry with the recorded sound, and they differed from those of other commercial record labels. They use only two-colour printing on matt paper glued over a thick matt black cardboard sleeve - always leaving a thin black line around the cover’s edge. Artists that contributed to the overall style of Folkways records were Irwin Rosenhouse, David Stone Martin and Craig Mierop. However Clyne’s singular use of typography, layout and image was to be most often used and he was inspired by portrait photos given to him by Asch, and images that he would source during regular visits to the New York Public Library and National Archive.^[3]

Exhibitions[link]

In 2007, from the 29th of September, to the 27th of October, a retrospective exhibition of Clyne's work was mounted and curated by John Nixon^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Stephen Bram and Warren Taylor and was first shown at The Narrows in Melbourne, Australia. Featured works included a spoken word record by John Cage with music by David Tudor; Indian Music of Mexico, played in traditional communities and recorded by Henrietta Urchenko; The Real Boogie Woogie by Memphis Slim and Folk Songs for Young People by Pete Seeger.

Selected Folkways covers[link]

• Ella Jenkins - Seasons For Singing
• Pete Seeger & Sonny Terry at Carnegie Hall
• Memphis Slim - Memphis Slim
• Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs
• Dave Van Ronk - Ballads, Blues and a Spiritual
• Cisco Houston Sings Songs of the Open Road
• Raimon - Catalonian Protest songs
• The Roots of Lightnin' Hopkins

Selected book covers[link]

• Something About Cats and Other Pieces
• The Abominations of Yondo
• Something Near
• The Lurker at the Threshold
• West India Lights
• The Doll and One Other
• Fearful Pleasures
• The Clock Strikes Twelve
• Revelations in Black
• This Mortal Coil (book)
• Night's Black Agents
• The Throne of Saturn (short story collection)
• Not Long for this World
• Tales from Underwood
• The Survivor and Others
• In Re: Sherlock Holmes
• Wisconsin Murders
• Nightmares and Daydreams
• The Exploits of Chevalier Dupin
• The Opener of the Way
• The Folsom Flint and Other Curious Tales
• Mycroft & Moran
• The Curse of Yig (book)
• Witch House
• Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories
• Three Problems for Solar Pons
• The Green Round
• The Fourth Book of Jorkens

Influences[link]

Clyne was an admirer and collector of the works of Poul Kjaerholm and Melanesian Art from New Guinea and Vanuatu.^[4]

Quotes[link]

"A record cover should be seen at a glance. You shouldn’t have to study different sections of it. You should see the total instantly."^[3]

Quotes about[link]

• "Ronald Clyne designed over 500 album covers for Folkways and is largely responsible for the famous label's striking visual appearance. His distinctive use of two-colour printing on matte paper and his deft use of modernist design strategies, created a body of work that gave the Folkways label its distinctive aroma of integrity and purity."^[3]

• “Clyne represents the graphic soul of Folkways. And a major factor in his success is that, like all great designers, he had a great client. In Moe Asch, Ronald Clyne discovered the ideal client; and in Clyne, Asch discovered the perfect artist to give form to his remarkable sonic vision.”^[3]

Works about[link]

Dan Steffan’s survey of Clyne's life and career was published in Earl Kemp's ezine, e.I (December 2008)^[5]

External links[link]

• Artspace exhibition article [2]
• Grain edit gallery of covers [3]
• UnitEditions article/gallery [4]
• Stephen Frost interview [5]
• Folkways site list of covers [6]

References[link]

Roger Sprung (born August 29, 1930, in New York City) is an American banjo player and teacher best known for introducing authentic bluegrass banjo picking styles to the folk music community in the north and for the eclectic manner in which he has adapted bluegrass banjo techniques to music of other genres.^[1]

Biography[link]

Beginnings[link]

Roger Sprung began playing music at the age of seven when an interest in the piano was sparked by his nanny who taught him to play a tune. Later, around age ten, Roger took formal piano lessons for about a year, but by then he had already taught himself to play by ear. He was introduced to folk music as a teenager in 1947 when his older brother took him to hear musicians perform in New York’s Washington Square. After taking up the guitar Roger soon took up the banjo, teaching himself to play by ear with the aid of 78 rpm records by Earl Scruggs. He was also influenced by Pete Seeger, Paul Cadwell, and also Tom Paley from whom he took a few banjo lessons. In 1950, Sprung made the first of many trips to bluegrass country, accompanying mandolinist Harry West to Asheville, North Carolina. There he had his first exposure to such traditional country musicians as Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Samantha Bumgarner.^[2] These trips became a regular part of Sprung's musical life, and he passed along the styles and techniques he absorbed during them to his fellow musicians in the north. As bluegrass historian and performer Ralph Lee Smith wrote, "Banjo player Roger Sprung almost single-handedly introduced Southern bluegrass music to New York through his playing in Washington Square."^[3]

In 1953 Sprung joined Erik Darling and Bob Carey to form the Folksay Trio. The group recorded four tracks on an anthology album that also included performances by Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. One of the trio's songs, "Tom Dooley," would later be popularized by the Kingston Trio and become one of the best-selling folk song recordings of all time.^{[note 1]} Carey and Darling later joined Alan Arkin, who would go on to achieve fame as an actor, to form the highly successful folk group The Tarriers. In 1957, Sprung formed another group, The Shanty Boys, with Lionel Kilberg and Mike Cohen.^[4]

Career[link]

Over the past six decades, Sprung has performed with such legendary folk musicians as Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson as well as with more recent country music artists Willie Nelson, Winona Judd, and Tanya Tucker.^[5][6] He has recorded with Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians^[7] and toured with popular jazz singer Kay Starr.^[8] His television appearances include the Jimmy Dean, Garry Moore, and Dean Martin Shows, and he has performed at both the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.^[1] For the past quarter century he has performed with guitarist Hal Wylie and various other musicians as "Roger Sprung, Hal Wylie and the Progressive Bluegrassers." Sprung appears frequently at folk festivals and musical conventions, including the Philadelphia Folk Festival, at which he performed for 30 consecutive years,^[9] and the Union Grove Fiddler's Convention in North Carolina, where in 1970 he was winner of the banjo competition.^[10] In addition to his performing and recording career, Sprung sells and repairs banjos and has been teaching banjo and other instruments since 1950. Notable among his former students were Eric Darling and John Stewart,^[9] who became replacement members of The Weavers and the Kingston Trio, respectively.^{[note 2]}

Repertoire[link]

Sprung's recordings and concert appearances embrace a variety of musical genres. In addition to traditional bluegrass and ragtime music, his repertoire includes arrangements of Elizabethan and classical pieces, Broadway show tunes, jazz and big band standards, and holiday songs. Composers whose works he has arranged for banjo include Mozart, Weill, Sousa, Ernesto Lecuona, and Stephen Foster. Among the selections he has recorded are ones as musically diverse as "Hava Nagila", "Hello, Dolly," "Turkey in the Straw," "Jingle Bells," "Puff, the Magic Dragon," "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise," and "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter."

Sprung's instrument is a 1927 Gibson which he reconstructed himself using parts from two other Gibson banjos.^[9]

Discography[link]

• American Folksay: Ballads and Dances, Vol. 2, The Folksay Trio (1953) (Stinson)
• Off-Beat Folk Songs, The Shanty Boys (1958) (Elektra)
• Progressive bluegrass. Vol. 1, Roger Sprung & his Progressive Bluegrassers (1963) (Folkways Records)
• Progressive ragtime bluegrass 2 and other instrumentals, Roger Sprung & his Bluegrass All-Stars (1964) (Folkways Records)
• Progressive bluegrass. Vol. 3, Five string banjo specialties, Roger Sprung & his Progressive Bluegrassers (1965) (Folkways Records)
• Grassy licks, Roger Sprung & his Progressive Bluegrassers (1966) (Verve/Folkways)
• Roger Sprung & his Progressive Bluegrassers, Roger Sprung & his Progressive Bluegrassers (1967) (Showcase)
• Bluegrass blast : a mixed bag of ol' timey music, Roger Sprung & Hal Wylie & the Progressive Bluegrassers (1974) (Folkways Records)
• Bluegrass Gold, Hal Wylie & Roger Sprung & the Progressive Bluegrassers (1978) (Showcase)
• Bluegrass Gold, Vol. 2, Roger Sprung & the Progressive Bluegrassers (Showcase)
• New and Original Sound of Irish-Grass (1982) (Showcase)
• Pickin' on the mountain, Roger & Joan Sprung (Showcase)
• Roger & Joan, Roger & Joan Sprung (Showcase)

Notes[link]

1. ^ It has been suggested that the Folksay Trio's recording of "Tom Dooley" was in fact the inspiration for the Kingston Trio's later recording. The notes accompanying the CD collection, "The Kingston Trio: The Guard Years" make this claim, and the New York Times's obituary for Erik Darling states that the Folksay Trio version "strongly influenced the Kingston Trio when that group recorded the song." (William Grimes, "Erik Darling Dies at 74; Musician in the Weavers", The New York Times, August 7, 2008, accessed October 26, 2009.) Alternate theories about the Kingston Trio's possible sources for the song have been put forth as well. For a thorough discussion of the subject, see Peter J. Curry, "Tom Dooley": The Ballad That Started The Folk Boom.
2. ^ Sprung's influence on other musicians extends beyond his teaching. He has been cited, for instance, as an influence on Bela Fleck, a banjo player whose eclectic repertoire resembles that of Sprung. See for example the "Roger Spring" entry at North American Urban Folk Music 1940-1960 - Celebration 2008, Eugene Chadbourne, Roger Sprung Biography, and Frank Beacham's Journal, "Folkies Gather in New York's Washington Square Park for Reunion".

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} Eur, International Who's Who in Popular Music 2002, (Routledge; 4th edition, 2002, ISBN 1-85743-161-8), p.480.
2. ^ Steven D. Price, Old As the Hills, (New York: The Viking Press, 1975, ISBN 0-670-52204-X), pp. 83-84.
3. ^ Ralph Lee Smith, Folk Songs of Greenwich Village in the 1950's and 1960's, (Pacific, Missouri: Mel Bay Publications, 2008, ISBN 0-7866-7176-9), p. 9.
4. ^ Ronald D. Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 (Culture, Politics, and Cold War), (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002, ISBN 1-55849-348-4) p. 140.
5. ^ Price, pp. 84.
6. ^ Jeff Anzevino, "Roger Sprung", Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, Inc., Newsletter, Number 20, Summer '99, accessed October 27, 2009.
7. ^ Price, pp. 84-86.
8. ^ Price, pp. 85-86.
9. ^ ^{a b c} Nancy K. Crevier, "Roger Sprung: Newtown’s Own ‘Pioneer of Bluegrass’," The Newtown Bee, June 18, 2009, accessed October 24, 2009.
10. ^ Steve Terrill, String Bands in the North Carolina Piedmont, (McFarland & Company, 2004, ISBN 0-7864-1826-5), p 127.

External links[link]

• Official Website, Roger Sprung - Bluegrass Banjo Pioneer.
• Smithsonian Folkways, Liner notes for "Progressive Bluegrass, Vol. 3".

Moses ("Moe") Asch (December 2, 1905, Warsaw – October 19, 1986, New York City) was the founder of Folkways Records. Asch ran the label from 1948 until his death. Folkways was instrumental in bringing folk music into the American cultural mainstream.

Life and work[link]

Moses Asch was the son of Yiddish language novelist and dramatist Sholem Asch, and the younger brother of novelist Nathan Asch.

Asch recorded and published LP records by such famous folk and blues singers as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger. Cisco Houston and Ella Jenkins. In 1952, Asch's label issued the Anthology of American Folk Music, compiled by Harry Smith, which brought a wider awareness of traditional American folk and blues to a new generation.

Asch had a significant recording relationship with James P. Johnson, the so-called Father of Stride Piano. Johnson made a significant series of recordings for several labels controlled by Asch, including Asch, Stinson, Disc, and Folkways. On the Stinson album, New York Jazz, Johnson recorded 5 numbers which he stated could be heard in New York in the 1910s, in addition to the first recorded piano solo of Scott Joplin's, Euphonic Sounds. This established the link between the stride piano of Johnson, and the ragtime of Joplin, from which stride is descended.

One principle behind Asch's direction of the Folkways label was that he never deleted a single title from the Folkways catalogue. As he said, "Just because the letter J is less popular than the letter S, you don't take it out of the dictionary." After his death, the Folkways recordings were acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, and Asch stipulated in his will that no titles were to be deleted, and that the unexplored master tapes in the Folkways archive should also be explored.^[1]

Footnotes[link]

1. ^ "Smithsonian Folkways Legacy". folkways.si.edu. January 3, 2007. http://www.folkways.si.edu/explore_folkways/legacy.aspx. Retrieved July 30, 2011. 

External links[link]

• Smithsonian Folkways: A history

Further reading[link]

• American National Biography, vol. 1, pp. 661–662.
• Carlin, Richard. Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways. New York: Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2008. ISBN 0-06-156355-2
• Goldsmith, Peter D. Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. ISBN 1-56098-812-6
• Olmsted, Tony. Folkways Records: Moses Asch and His Encyclopedia of Sound. New York,NY: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-93709-4

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Mickey Hart
Hart at the Web 2.0 conference in 2005
Background information
Birth name	Michael Steven Hartman
Born	(1943-09-11) September 11, 1943 (age 68)
Origin	Brooklyn, NY, United States
Genres	Rock, world music[1]
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Percussion
Years active	1960s–present
Associated acts	Grateful Dead, The Other Ones, The Dead, Rhythm Devils
Website	www.mickeyhart.net

Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman; September 11, 1943) is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band the Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 to February 1971, and from October 1974 to August 1995. He and fellow Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann earned the nickname "the rhythm devils".

Career[link]

Before joining the Grateful Dead, Hart and his father, Leonard Hart, a champion rudimental drummer, owned and operated Hart Music, selling drums and musical instruments in San Carlos, California.

Hart joined the Grateful Dead in September 1967, and left in February 1971 when he extricated himself from the band, due to conflict between band management and Mickey's father.^[2] During his sabbatical, in 1972, he recorded the album Rolling Thunder. He returned to the Dead in 1974, and remained with the group until their official dissolution in 1995. Collaboration with the remaining members of the Grateful Dead continues, under the band name The Dead.

Alongside his work with the Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart has flourished as a solo artist, percussionist, and the author of several books.^{[citation needed]} In these endeavors he has pursued a lifelong interest in ethnomusicology and in world music. His travels and his interest in all things percussion-related led him to collect percussion instruments, and to collaborate with percussion masters the world over.^{[citation needed]}

Hart became interested in percussion as a grade-school student. A few months out of high school he "discovered the work of Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji".^[3] Olatunji later taught Hart and collaborated with Hart and the Grateful Dead on a regular basis.^[4]

Hart was influential in recording global musical traditions on the verge of possible extinction, working with archivists and ethnomusicologists at both the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution. He is on the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center and has been a spokesperson for the Save Our Sounds audio preservation initiative. He also serves on the Library of Congress National Recorded Sound Preservation Board and is known for reissues and other recordings with historical and cultural value.

In 1991, Hart produced the album Planet Drum, which remained at #1 on the Billboard World Music Chart for 26 weeks,^[5] and received the first ever Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.^[6]

Hart has written books on the history and traditions of drumming throughout history. His solo recordings (featuring a variety of guest musicians) are percussive of course, but also verge on New Age music categorically. His enthusiasm for world music traditions and preservation and collaborative efforts is comparable to that of guitarist Ry Cooder.

In 1994, Mickey Hart was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.^[7]

In 2000, Hart became a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to seek to establish new knowledge and develop more effective therapies which awaken, stimulate and heal through the extraordinary power of music^[8] – continuing his investigation into the connection between healing and rhythm, and the neural basis of rhythm. In 2003, he was honored with the organization’s Music Has Power Award, recognizing his advocacy and continuous commitment to raising public awareness of the positive effect of music.^[9]

Mickey Hart (in background, playing drums) and Bob Weir (playing guitar) performing at the Mid-Atlantic Inaugural Ball during the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, January 20, 2009.

Hart was also a judge for the 3rd annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.^[10]

After the death of Jerry Garcia and the consequent dissolution of the Grateful Dead in 1995, Hart continued to play music with various groups including members of the Grateful Dead. In the 1996 Furthur Festival, Mickey Hart's Mystery Box played, as did Bob Weir's band Ratdog.

In 2005, Hart and the members of the band Particle joined to create the Hydra Project.

During 2006, Hart teamed up with fellow Grateful Dead bandmate Bill Kreutzmann, Phish bassist Mike Gordon and former The Other Ones lead guitarist Steve Kimock, to form the Rhythm Devils, a nickname that refers to Hart and Kreutzmann's drum duets and improvisation. The band features songs from their respective repertoires as well as new songs written by Jerry Garcia's songwriting companion Robert Hunter. The Rhythm Devils announced their first tour in 2006, which ended at the popular Vegoose festival in Las Vegas, Nevada over the Halloween weekend.

In June and July 2008, Hart led the Mickey Hart Band on a U.S. concert tour. The band consists of Hart, Steve Kimock on guitar and pedal steel guitar, George Porter, Jr. on bass, Kyle Hollingsworth on keyboards, Sikiru Adepoju on talking drum, Walfredo Reyes, Jr. on drums, and Jen Durkin on vocals.^[11][12][13]

In 2010 Hart debuted "Rhythms of the Universe," a composition based on a variety of astrophysical data. The composition represents a collaboration between scientist and artist, using their own sophisticated tools. Nobel Laureate in physics George Smoot from the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and Keith Jackson, a computer scientist and musician also from LBNL, are providing some of the data for the project. The final result will be a musical “history of the universe", from the Big Bang onwards through galaxy and star formation, up until modern times, including images from the Hubble Space Telescope and rhythms derived from the cosmic background radiation, supernovae, quasars, and many other astrophysical phenomena. The work premiered at the conference "Cosmology on the Beach" in Playa de Carmen in January 2010.^[14]

In April 2010, it was announced that Rhythm Devils will tour in the summer of 2010 with a new lineup including Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (assorted percussion), Keller Williams (guitar, vocals), Sikiru Adepoju (talking drum), Davy Knowles (guitar, vocals), and Andy Hess (bass).^[15]

The Rhythm Devils did only one show in 2011, at the Gathering of the Vibes Music Festival in Bridgeport CT. This version of the band was Hart, Kreutzmann, Keller Williams, Sikiru, Steve Kimock and Reed Mathis of Tea Leaf Green on bass.^[16]

In 2011 Hart debuted a new version of the Mickey Hart Band^[17]. This lineup included Tim Hockenberry (vocals,keyboards, trombone, saxophone, other instruments), Crystal Monee Hall (vocals, guitar, hand percussion), Ben Yonas (keyboards), Gawain Matthews (guitar), Sikiru Adepoju (talking drum, djembe, shakers), Ian "Inkx" Herman (drums), Greg Ellis (percussion), Vir McCoy (bass). The band played a few shows in August 2011 on the east and west coast. In November and December 2011, the Mickey Hart Band did a 17 date tour with a slightly modified lineup. McCoy and Ellis were not in this lineup, and Widespread Panic band member Dave Schools joined the band as their bass player for the tour.^[18][19]

On October 11, 2011, Smithsonian Folkways released The Mickey Hart Collection. Comprising 25 albums, the series includes music from regions that span the globe, including Sudan, Nigeria, Tibet, Indonesia, Latvia and Brazil.^[20]

Personal life[link]

Mickey Hart was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island attending Lawrence High School before dropping out as a senior and leaving for Europe.^[21]

Hart has been married since 1990 to lawyer and environmental activist Caryl Hart, who obtained her PhD from UC Berkeley in 2009 on the topic of climate change and public lands. He has two children.^[22] One son, Taro, had his heartbeat recorded in utero and used as the basis for the album Music to Be Born By. His brother, Jerry Hart, is a radio talk show host^[23] and social media business consultant^[24] based in San Francisco. In addition, Hart is the only Jewish ex-member of the Grateful Dead.^[25]

Bibliography[link]

• Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion (1990)
• Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm (1991)
• Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music (1999)
• Songcatchers: In Search of the World's Music (2003)

Solo discography[link]

Albums:

• Rolling Thunder (1972) – Mickey Hart
• Diga (1976) – Diga Rhythm Band
• The Apocalypse Now Sessions: The Rhythm Devils Play River Music (1980) – The Rhythm Devils
• Däfos (1983) – Mickey Hart, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim
• Yamantaka (1983) – Mickey Hart, Henry Wolff, Nancy Hennings
• Music to be Born By (1989) – Mickey Hart
• At the Edge (1990) – Mickey Hart
• Planet Drum (1991) – Mickey Hart
• Mickey Hart's Mystery Box (1996) – Mickey Hart
• Supralingua (1998) – Mickey Hart
• Spirit into Sound (2000) – Mickey Hart
• The Best of Mickey Hart: Over the Edge and Back (2002) – Mickey Hart
• Global Drum Project (2007) – Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, Giovanni Hidalgo
• Mysterium Tremendum (2012) – The Mickey Hart Band

Video:

• The Rhythm Devils Concert Experience (2008) – The Rhythm Devils

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

External videos
	Geo Sessions: Global Drum Project Pt. 1. From National Geographic. Global Drum Project, featuring ex-Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and tabla legend Zakir Hussain

• Mickey Hart official website
• Grateful Dead official website