Track Listing

1. Udu Chant
2. Island Groove
3. Light Over Shadow
4. Dance of the Hunter's Fire
5. Jewe (You Are the One)
6. Hunt
7. Temple Caves
8. Dancing Sorcerer
9. Bones
10. Lost River
11. Evening Samba
12. Iyanu (Surprises)
13. Mysterious Island

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91210 in Music
• Released on: 1991-09-25
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
On the heels of Mickey Hart's acclaimed Global Drum Project album comes The Mickey Hart Collection, a series focusing on landmark world music albums masterminded by the Grateful Dead percussionist. On the innovative Planet Drum album, Hart brought together Nigerian drum legend Babatunde Olatunji, Indian tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, Nigerian talking drum ace Sikiru Adepoju, Puerto Rico's master conguero Giovanni Hidalgo, and Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira, and jazz singer Flora Purim. The album won the very first GRAMMY(tm) for world music in 1991, spent an unprecedented 26 weeks at #1 on the Billboard world music chart, and remains a world-music staple.

From the Label
PLANET DRUM, the voice to Hart's book of the same name, represents a musical atlas of the World Beat. Hart and company extend the sonic territory traversed in his album AT THE EDGE for a powerful and passionate journey.

"It had long been a dream of mine to bring together great drummers from around the world to make a recording based entirely on percussion," says Hart. " In 1991, that dream became reality." For the companion recording to his second book, Mickey Hart drew upon the stellar musical friendships he had made over several decades to make real his dream of a percussion masterwork, blending the talents and native instruments of percussion giants from five traditions into a celebratory classic.

His home in Petaluma, California was converted -- room by room -- into a recording facility wired for video as well as for sound, and recording sessions spanned several weeks in this comfortable, ultra-creative communal setting. The resulting album won the Grammy for Best World Music Album in the first year of that category's existence, and set the standard for world music as a genre. Winning numerous other critics' and audience polls, it continues to establish itself as a true perennial of world music in general and percussion genius in particular.

PLANET DRUM is also available on Gold CD in the AU20 format. The AU20 trademark distinguishes enhanced audiophile editions of 20-bit digital masters replicated on 24K gold CDs. To insure the most accurate reproduction of the music, all analogue to 20-bit digital conversion is from the original mastertapes. Releases in the AU20 series include all artwork from the original albums and are individually numbered.

Customer Reviews

Dreaming in drums
This is Mickey Hart's finest solo effort. Aside from having great percussionary compositions this cd has the best "recording quality". Newer Hart cds like SUPRALINGUA sound rather dry and artificial and don't have nearly the emotional and trance-like impact that this cd has. The song THE DANCING SORCERER (on this cd) for instance has an ethereal aura around the tones of some of the instruments that add's greatly to the effect of the song. JEWE is played entirely on the human body. Hands and chests and voices are the only instruments and it is a positively thunderous song with great vocals.

If you don't have a fantastic stereo system but you know someone who does, listen to this cd at their house. The song TEMPLE CAVES has a certain thing (I don't want to give it away so I'm not going to say exactly what) that you will not hear on boom-boxes or other lo-fi stereo systems. You can hear the song itself on anything, but on really nice stereo systems there is something fantastic revealed about TEMPLE CAVES. This is music you will feel at the very core of your being.

Some Successful Experiments, But Not a Cohesive Album
In this concept album, Hart brings great drummers from around the world to participate. The result is wholly new works that are without question novel, but this record has not fared well in my collection since I bought it four years ago. I find myself choosing traditional Brazilian or Latin American or Indian or Middle Eastern performances rather than Planet Drum. I would especially warn potential buyers that Planet Drum is not a survey of percussion styles that will help you decide what you do and do not like. It is instead outside all the mainstream styles and I would consider it the kind of album that would augment a percussion collection rather than start one.

One of the best percussion CDs ever
I have owned this CD since it first came out and saw Mickey Hart/Planet Drum perform revently here in Seattle. They are amazing and this is probably one of the best percussion jam sessions ever recorded onto CD