Street roots
9
April 27, 2012
HART, fro m page 8
experience, but that’s what science can tell
us. We’re about to break the rhythmic code
of DNA about which music does what to
which part of the brain. That’s just a few
years away. So we’re learning more and
more about what part of the brain is
activated by what rhythms, what amplitude.
Music is really becoming quite a science in
the field of neuroimaging, neurology and the
motor diseases.
S.Z.:. Many people who live on the street are
dealing with a mental health and/or addiction
issues. Do you think that music therapy could
be successfully applied to addiction or harm
reduction therapy?
M.H.: Of course. Music is a focus. Music
is a tuning system, not just to bring people
together to dance and make love, which are
two of it’s functions as a ritual. It brings the
vibratory essence of the body together and
it tunes it, like a tuning fork. That’s what
music does. It can make you happy, it can
make you melancholy, it can energize you, it
can put you to sleep. There are a lot of
things that music can do that we don’t know
about yet. We’ve only been recording music
for a little over a hundred years. Of course,
we have been playing music since the
beginning of time. Our earliest records show
that as we became civilized, we used music
as a way of expanding and developing our
brains and coming together as a people.
Every culture on the planet has music.
There is not one culture that does not have
music. That should say something to you.
S.Z.: You have said that music “reconnects”
the damaged mind. What then, is the impact
on a vibrant mind?
M.H.: It enhances. It exhausts the
consciousness. When everything is working
right and you add this to the mix, you have a
great time, right? You’re elated, you feel
good. It’s a healthy experience, a life-giving
thing. That’s what music is about. If you are
doing great, music makes you even more
powerful.
S.Z.: Music programs in public schools
continue to be on the chopping block in many
schools’ budgets across the nation. You have
talked about music being a key component to
learning. What was your experience, in your
youth, with music in the educational system?
M.H.: When you have a healthy organism,
you learn. Music stimulates and focuses.
Music also allows us to go into the spiritual
domain where the important things are to
us.
I had a great music teacher in high
school, which saved my life and guided me
to where I am now. Back then there were a
lot of music programs and it allowed me to
be who I am. Unfortunately now they’re
being ripped away from the schools which is
Draconian. It is like a throwback to a
civilization that has forgotten what music
does and is bankrupt basically. We’ve
become morally and spiritually bankrupt.
Take Einstein. He was really a good
musician, you know. He said that (music)
was really his first love. He would play on
his violin or piano and then run into his
studio and write down a few formulas. Then
back to the violin. He used the violin as a
way into thinking about the theories, the
BIG ones. The big mysterium tremendum:
relativity, time-space, and the matter that we
are embedded in. He used music.
S.Z.: What are your thoughts about the
effect that disappearing art and music
programs in our schools has on the future of
our collective musical consciousness?
M.H.: Yeah. It’s terrible. I mean, you’re
nurturing a society that doesn’t really have a
way of becoming spiritual and accessing
those very important areas of humanity.
Music is one of the only things that does it.
Taking away music. Many studies show that
music increases skill in math, science,
technology, engineering, all kinds of skills.
Music is an enhancer of that. You take
music away, you lose the spiritual side and
then you also lose everything else that
music allows for which is higher learning,
advancements in science. Also music stirs
the imagination which is really an important
thing for the development of any species.
Without imagination, you just dry up and
die. You become a thing of the past and you
become irrelevant and eventually you will no
longer be. So, if you’re talking about a long
range view of humanity, I see a very bleak
future when you don’t have the arts. Not
just music, but all kinds of arts. Because we
were given those arts to become human and
stay human and advance as a species. This
takes us back to the Stone Age.
S.Z.: The Grateful Dead were part of the
soundtrack to the ‘60s revolution - protests
against an overseas lost war and the general
disgust with the leadership and war machine
overriding the best interest of the people. What
do you think of the Occupy movement?
M.H.: Yeah, well they’re just crying out.
They’re screaming, just like we were
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screaming. Screaming to understand what
they stand for and people get desperate. It’s
another evolution in the protest. Power to
the people. More power to them. If they
ever got organized, they could be dangerous.
I hope someday that more of those kind of
of the planets. He saw the planets and the
whole universe as the world of sound. The
world as a musical instrument. He called it
the music of the spheres, or musica
universalis. Which is music universe. I would
have to say that would be the biggest
influence, on a larger level. You know, I’ve
had musicians who have influenced me, but
Pythagoras is the biggie.
When people see o ilie r
people doing what they
m ight feel, it empowers
them. Wow! Therefs more of
os than 1 ever thought.
That's the way it was lo r me
In the "60s. Once I started
seeing the crowds, 1 said,
"Wow It"s not just the five of
ns." There are a whole
bunch of people out there
that are dancing to onr
music and believing in some
of things we were tryin g to
say w ith onr music.
S.Z.: Tell us about the work you have done
for the American Folklife Center at the Library
of Congress and more recently, with The
Smithsonian Institution’s nonprofit record
label, Smithsonian Folkways.
things will happen.
S.Z.: What did the ‘60s and early ‘70s teach
this generation in terms of speaking out and
changing establishment?
M.H.: You always learn something from
something that came before. That’s why you
preserve music, that’s why you have history
books. When people see other people doing
what they might feel, it empowers them.
Wow! There’s more of us than I ever
thought. That’s the way it was for me in the
‘60s. Once I started seeing the crowds, I
M.H.: There are precious recordings that
are housed at the Library (of Congress) and
the Smithsonian Folkways. These
recordings are endangered. The discs and
different mediums we have used to record
sounds since 1890 are decomposing.
They’re rotting. So it’s a race against time to
get these collections and digitize them for
the future, forever. This music is not just
songs, they’re histories of thousands of
years of cultures. The next generation needs
some body of work to start their musical
career. Everybody bases their music on
somebody that has come before them. In
this case, bodies of work, whether it be the
blues, punk, Led Zepplin, Tibetan music,
whatever it is. You base it on something that
came before you and then eventually if you
stay with it the rest for your life, your own
skill becomes your own music.
S.Z.: I ’ve heard you say that you are
“playing with the beginning of time and space
now, dancing with the infinite, vibratory
universe. ” What is that like?
M.H.: You have the feeling that you know
what that first vibration was, the thing that
created it all. You know when it was and you
know where it was. So it gives you a kind of
spiritual connection to the whole chain of
being, of life, of the universe. And that
said, “Wow it’s n o t ju s t th e five of u s .”
y o u ’re a p a r t o f it. And th is is th e so u n d th a t
There are a whole bunch of people out
there that are dancing to our music and
believing in some of the things we were
trying to say with our music. So it’s
important for other people to witness what
happened before them and draw their own
conclusions on a personal and group level.
started it all. Some people might say I’m
having a conversation with the creator. I’m
having a conversation with a creational
moment. If there is a god, its got to be a
vibration. It’s a very spiritual experience to
be able to interact with the energies that
created everything — everything. It’s a very
powerful thought, so you just ponder that
for a while and you play with it. And
somehow it brings you deeper into the heart
of music.
S.Z.: Who or what has influenced you most
greatly as a musician?
M.H.: I would have to say Pythagoras.
About 400 B.C. he was the father of the
science of music. He discovered the octave.
And he also gave numerical notations to all
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