Home News Classic Rock News Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart Releasing Expanded Edition of Grammy-Winning 1991 Album “Planet...

Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart Releasing Expanded Edition of Grammy-Winning 1991 Album “Planet Drum”

1042

PRNewsFoto/UMeThis month marks the 25th anniversary of the release of longtime Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart‘s acclaimed 1991 collaborative album Planet Drum, and the milestone will be celebrated with an expanded reissue of the record that will hit stores on December 2. The original album was the first record ever to receive a Grammy in the Best World Music Album category.

Planet Drum features Hart playing with a band made up of a variety of respected musicians from around the world, including Zakir Hussain, Babatunde Olatunji, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim.

The Planet Drum: 25th Anniversary Edition will include three new bonus tracks — “Sea of Showers,” “Throat Games,” and “The Spot,” with added arrangement and composition from renowned Indian percussionist Hussain. “Sea of Showers” features vocals by Purim and Olatunji, accompanied by an eclectic variety of instruments; “Throat Games” is made up of various international voices scat singing; and “The Spot” pays sonic tribute to the water gods.

Looking back on the creation of the album, Hart says, “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.”

He adds, “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.”

The Planet Drum reissue will be available on CD, as a vinyl LP and as a digital download.

In other news, Hart has announced plans to release a new solo album in 2017 as part of a new partnership with Universal Music Group.

Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.