RockOm

An Interview with Nutone artist Donna De Lory
By Trevor Harden, Trevor@RockOm.net

Donna De Lory's latest album Sanctuary (out now on Nutone Music) is by and large a mantra-based chant album, using ancient Sanskrit devotional prayers alongside original lyrics, all set to a beautiful and meditative East-meets-West instrumentation. Through her heartfelt, gentle and breathy vocal delivery, Donna's singing wraps the listener in a nurturing love and encourages a sense of devotion and transcendence.

Donna has not always been focused on yogic music, however. Her past pop career had her singing vocals on albums by Santana, Carly Simon and Jewel to mention a few. Most famously, Donna was known as one of Madonna's main live accompanying vocalists for nearly 20 years.

In this interview, Donna De Lory shares with RockOm about the title track from her album Sanctuary, how conscious intention transforms music into a healing force, Joseph Campbell's influence on her life and work, and what being open to the Divine Mother has taught her about God.

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Trevor: I'm not an overly emotional guy but I found that upon listening to your album for the first time, as the beautiful first track rolled over into your song "Sanctuary" - and I heard how you took this old Christian folksy worship song that I grew up with and brought it into a meditative and spiritual arena - I just got kind of choked up. What is your history with the song "Sanctuary"? Is it something you came upon recently or did you have a church background that introduced you to the song?

Donna: Not really. Growing up my family was Christian-Catholic and mom is actually a recovering Catholic. She was wanting to be a nun when she was young and grew up in Catholic schools and then kind of rebelled against that. So when I was a kid I always wanted to go to church and I went with my friends to different churches or with my Jewish friends to their temple. Not that I was trying to find the place for me, but I just liked the sense of community and the devotion that you felt in that environment. I moved to Nashville when I was eighteen and I went to church there and started on my spiritual path at that time. I probably did hear the song "Sanctuary" in the church but more recently I heard it on a friend's CD.

I heard the words "with thanksgiving I'll be a living sanctuary for you" and sometimes I'll hear words that someone else wrote that really ring true, something I would write. The actual song goes on for many more verses but I didn't resonate so much with the other words. I felt like all I really wanted to say was this over and over again. And that's something I love about the mantras where you take something very simple - either the names of God or a phrase like "I am divine love" - and you sing it over and over again. I love what I've learned about mantra-based music and how I can apply that to other songs whether it's "Amazing Grace", my song "Sky is Open", "May God's Love Be with You Always" or "Sanctuary."

It's beautiful to say something that can resonate with people but not engage them too much. Music is a tool for opening and when you study the history of music I believe that was the original intent of music - to open people up, to heal and to move people. Coming from a really commercial pop background, I now look at music this way and set intentions for the music that I make. I want to have this be my gift for other people to help them. Consider what Mother Teresa did or Amma, people who are giving, giving, giving. I feel like my music is my small piece of what I can do. That song, "Sanctuary", for me reminds me of that. People come up to me all the time and say, "Please don't stop doing this. I know it's hard, you've got your family and other things, but please keep doing this."

Trevor: When we spoke with one of your label-mates and friends David Newman, he shared about the yogic use of sound as a path for healing. So that's what you're talking about here, right? That music has a healing power?

Donna: When you have that conscious intention it absolutely has a healing power. I was doing an interview a couple of weeks ago and someone mentioned a man's name, a healer, and wanted to know if I knew of him. I said, "No, I don't know this person." They said, "He exclusively uses your music to heal people. The vibrations and the frequencies in your music really help and he has a lot of experience with that." It was beautiful to hear that and I thought, "Of course!" I've personally been there with people when they've transitioned and left the body as music played or people will play my music when there's a baby being born. I hear stories like this and that is what music can be used for - these deep, deep meaningful experiences in our lives. And it's beautiful because when you use music in this way you can go back by playing this music again to that place. It's a tool to take you back to that moment again.

Trevor: In the album's liner notes you spoke to how Joseph Campbell was an inspiration for you. What did his work mean to your spiritual journey?

Donna: Wow, it was just his overall view of mythology and man's quest and incredible awe for this higher power. This is what he dedicated his life to study and in going back to see cave drawings and all the art. It's basically this yearning to know God, a connection to nature, and that we're all connected. We need to get back to that place, obviously, because what we're doing with the planet and each other is not respectful. Because of the damage that has been done it's especially time to wake up and to realize these things, that we're all really connected.

Plus he just gives you so much information you can go out and learn about. I first learned Sanskrit from watching him and hearing his talks. He talked about Sanskrit as the great spiritual language of the world because of how old it is and the intention put into it. I went further into studying yoga and began hearing the words again and started putting these mantras and words into my songs. I've always been on and interested in a spiritual path, whether that was studying Joseph Campbell or Yogananda or something from the Christian tradition - wherever I was.

Now it's yoga and everyone's coming together to help themselves and other people through yoga. I love yogis because they're generous and help other people. As far as the physical practice of yoga in our country is concerned, I think it's great if there's a yoga center on every corner because it's just going to make people be more compassionate and have some of this intention. It's OK even if it's just "Namaste" at the end of a class, at least you're bowing to some thing that's greater than yourself and I think we need that.

Trevor: On a personal, non-musical note, I see that you have two children. Everyone agrees that children become like our gurus as they have so much to teach us. What are they teaching you right now?

Donna: You don't know love until you have children; every day I'm being taught something. I'm learning just "being" and not having to "do" all the time - just being in that moment. I'm really feeling time passing quickly now so I'm trying to hold on to these moments. Even when I look back to pictures of my 6-year old daughter when she was a baby, I don't even remember! It's going by so fast. I say to my husband, "Did you take more pictures? Did you get the movie of them?" I'm realizing this is the good stuff, the stuff of life.

It's the interesting thing about life, as you go you realize what's really important. With all those years that I spent striving for something in my career and all those desires, now I'm trying to just "be" instead of wanting so much all the time. I'm just so grateful I'm right here.

Trevor: Speaking of mothers, the culture in which we live here in the West has a very masculine view of God overall. You have "Jai Ma" on your album and so what do you think we're missing in our understanding by only having a Father figure or more specifically what has being open to the Divine Mother meant to your journey?

Donna: I think we're missing the nurturing aspects of the divine. I was watching a video of Amma and they were asking her, "Why do you think people love what you're doing so much, just coming and getting a hug?" She was saying that if she can make both men and women feel more of that nurturing Mother energy, that's what she wants to do. Her hugs are opening those people up. I guess with my music, I want to do that same thing. And by me being a mother now I'm starting to understand it and have more of that to share in my lyrics and music. Since I had my daughter who is six, "He Ma Durga" has been my theme song or mantra. It was really powerful for me and for other people too. When I sing it, people are holding themselves and being compassionate toward themselves.

That's what's missing; we don't have that kind of nurturing support to love ourselves, or know God is the ultimate lover who loves and holds you. And that is what Amma is doing; she's loving everyone. Anyone who comes up there for a hug, she gives them the same amount of love. Whether you're a celebrity or the poor and dying, it's that ultimate love. Also Mother Earth gives us that all the time and we don't see it, though some people do. She's giving us that and we keep doing what we do with the earth and not being conscious, and the Mother's still there giving me another chance to have a child and this life and creation.

I think I'll always sing those mantras because it's so important to me. When I think of doing another mantra CD I think, "I have to keep singing Mother." I just worked on a compilation CD that is specifically made for doctors giving this music to their patients. On it I basically just sing, "Mother, Mother," in English, Spanish and Italian. Sometimes just saying the words "mother" is so beautiful. If we can say these mantras and get out of our heads about our own mothers, but instead recognize that nurturing love that is there for all of us, then we can really feel it. Everyone feels it inside somewhere so I love that music can bring that more to people. At my shows I love when it's exciting and people are dancing, but the most powerful thing is when you get people to open, whether they're crying or want to go give someone a big hug. After I play my music, that's how I feel; I feel like my heart is so much more open.

LINKS:

DonnaDeLory.com

Donna on Nutone Music

An Interview with Mickey Hart
By Tom Crenshaw tom@rockom.net

As a child, Mickey Hart used to stand out in thunderstorms listening to the patterns and sounds of the rain as it fell. He recalls some of his neighbors saying quizzically to his parents, "That boy of yours, Mrs. Hart, he's a strange fellow!" That rhythmic inquisitiveness as a child led Mickey deeper into the mysteries of sound as he grew older, becoming one of the world’s most celebrated percussionists and authoritarians on world music and music's healing abilities.

For nearly three decades Mickey has performed on drums and percussion as part of the Grateful Dead (along with fellow drummer Bill Kreutzmann) but his accomplishments don't end there. Through his tireless study of world music Mickey has gone on to contribute more than most any other musician to the study of sound, rhythm and the incredible healing aspects contained within.

Mickey has also written four books documenting his lifelong fascination with the history and mythology of music. These include Drumming at the Edge of Magic, Planet Drum, Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music, and Songcatchers: In Search of the World’s Music. He’s appeared before the United States Senate to discuss the healing powers of music and rhythm and is a member of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function at Beth Abraham Hospital where he continues his investigation into the connection between healing and rhythm and the neural bases of rhythm. Mickey has also been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress where he heads the subcommittee on the digitization and preservation of the Center's vast collections.

In addition, Mickey Hart has composed music for movies, television and celebrated events including Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, the PBS special Vietnam: A Television History, and The 1996 Summer Olympic Games to mention a few.

RockOm had the extraordinary opportunity to spend some time with Mickey recently to discuss his early initiation into sound and rhythm, his role in the Grateful Dead, his various Grammy Award-winning albums of percussion and world music, and the incredible reality that there are new, healing rhythms being born into the world every day.

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RockOm: What are your earliest memories of music and drumming?

Mickey Hart: That all depends on what you call music and what you call drumming. I was always interested in the nature of the rain, loud sounds of the city, trolley cars – so the rhythmic tattoo of New York City first captivated me, the rhythm and the noise of things – buildings being torn down, a lawn mower – pretty much "loud stuff." I love the loud in things. The rain especially was transfixing because it came down so rhythmically. I would stand out in the rain and let it beat on me and it went deep into the subconscious and inner self. It felt really good to be out there. Those were my first thoughts of rhythm and noise.

Then of course the radio would captivate me. My mother had Folkways records tucked in the middle of a Duke Ellington collection. I started listening to pygmy rainforest music and listening to indigenous musicians as the first real turn-on to membranophones, or drums. And Latin music was really taking over at that time in New York City – Tito Puente and Machito – and that was coming out of every radio and every phonograph around the city. Before Rock N’ Roll there was Latin music which was full of syncopation and  got my ear. My dad and mom were both rudimental drummers and when my dad had left when I was an infant, he left a practice pad. That practice pad was my key into the other side. When I heard the report of the practice pad, that sealed the deal. There was nothing more beautiful than the short, sharp sound from the pad; I could listen to it over and over again. It became like my radar. That was the beginning of it all. I was a strange, unsettling boy.

RO: Tell us about meeting Babatunde Olatunji and how that impressed upon you.

Mickey Hart: Olatunji came in about 1959 much later; what I’m talking about is the early and mid-50s. But when I heard Olatunji's album Drums of Passion I had never really heard drums played at that level and I certainly had never heard a talking drum – a variable pitched instrument. Here you had the powerful trance loops of Western Africa. I mean people didn’t know that’s what they were experiencing but here you had trance rhythms played in New York City in a fine recording studio with CBS. And Baba was a great vocalist so here you had chant over these powerful, magical rhythms. So when I heard that album that sealed the deal as well as far as the power of raw percussion and voice. It changed my life, no doubt.

Then of course I was fortunate enough to run into him in 1985 and when I asked him to open up for the Grateful Dead, he didn’t know who we were. He said, “Ya, ya, ya…” and left. Someone then must have told him who I was and he called me back. We got to be friends and he opened for the Grateful Dead and the fans loved him. He became my best friend and the godfather of my daughter. So he was another major influence to me as well as to hundreds of thousands of practitioners and musicians from around the world – Coltrane knew him. All kinds of people were being sucked into this powerful rhythm snake.

RO: When did you first recognize your experience with rhythm and drumming going from beyond the ordinary into a mystical or spiritual realm?

Mickey Hart: I didn’t know what to call it when I was young but I was going into trance when I was alone. I played alone a lot and so it became a meditation and I was definitely moving in and out of trance. Looking back on it now I would play for hours and not eat. I was totally in the zone and that is a sure sign of a trance. That was unconscious. But then when I started playing in the Grateful Dead, I started really seeing the ritual unfold. It was out of control. It was a wondrous thing, going into a new soundscape that no one had ever been to. Well, I had never been to it, nor had anyone else around me. So I figure we were moving into realms of consciousness by taking psychoactive drugs simultaneously and playing for hours and hours. Again, this was a deep trance. People would just lose themselves in the groove and dance for hours and copulate and everything. It was a quite a scene. That also made a big impression on me, seeing a new ritual being born – you know, with white kids on the edge of the Western world.

Then as far as the health part of all this, I saw that music reconnected you with the infinite, vibratory universe when my grandmother had Alzheimer’s. She hadn’t spoken a word in six months and I isolated her once in the car when I taking her somewhere. I just happened to play my tar, my single-membrane tar, for her for about 20 minutes. She was looking at it and all the sudden she spoke my name and I thought, “Wow, this is powerful.” This is somebody who was disconnected from speech, who was motor-impaired saying my name. Then when I stopped, she went back into the darkness. That was a moment for me and I realized that rhythm has to do with life and the giving of life and the taking of life. When the rhythm stops, you’re dead. When the rhythm is good, you live a good life. It also can reconnect some of the connections that are broken in the brain using certain rhythms at certain volumes. It was then that rhythm therapy came into view and the music therapists started appearing. I appeared in front of the Senate in 1990 and testified on the power of rhythm in front of Harry Reid on the Committee for Aging. Harry gave me and Oliver Sacks a million bucks to kick-start music therapy here in the West.

RO: You mentioned in earlier interviews that the Grateful Dead were in the business of transportation. What was your role in transporting your fans and listeners?

Mickey Hart: I made the traps. I was in the engine room. Me and Bill Kreutzmann made that feeling that allowed you to go to those places that laid the foundation for the melody and the harmony and the song.

RO: So in a sense of the word do you and Bill Kreutzmann consider yourselves modern day shamans?

Mickey Hart: You could say that. I would say we’re more “seat-of-the-pants” kind of shamans. But we are practicing the art of shamanism for sure. We’re transporting people into other consciousness and that’s what shaman do. Yeah, we don’t have a license [laughs] but we do it!

RO: In your role of being a transporter, where are you wanting your listeners to “arrive”?

Mickey Hart: It’s certainly a state of bliss, of being centered, of happiness – where you can make sense of everything around you. That’s what consciousness is all about. Everybody has a different consciousness but the idea is to elevate the consciousness to a place where you can feel who you are and how you fit in. That’s what spirituality really is – it’s a tuning system, to tune you and the universe. Part of the universe is the people you live with, the people you love, your children, your self! If you can’t have this feeling within yourself you can’t give it to anyone else.

So it’s a constant maintenance and practice. I play every day to maintain a level that I can share with others. How do you share the precious, invisible feeling of spirit with someone? Well you have to change it into a form. In this case, it’s music; it’s vibratory. The universe is vibratory, you are vibratory, the things you create in culture are vibratory. How these rhythm worlds all work together, that’s the yoga of sound. That’s why music is such a great vehicle. It’s not really about the music, it’s what the music does to you and the feeling it creates in you and what you do with that feeling. Music is important!

If you talk to Michael Jordan, he will tell you that going to the basket and being up there for four or five seconds -- that’s God. He’s in an absolutely perfect, rhythmic entrainment with himself, the people around him and the universe. It doesn’t happen all the time; it only happens in moments. It’s not like you can tune yourself in and stay in this place forever, it’s a constant ebb and flow in and out of these wonderful states of consciousness. But if you don’t go for these moments, then you’re just in the music business and I never thought of myself in the music business. It wasn’t about that. When I went after a groove and the music, it wasn’t necessarily to entertain. When I get lost in it, it might not even be interesting on some levels, it may be self-serving. But I’m trying to create some kind of a feeling that’s relevant to the moment.

You can’t really judge these things in those terms of good or bad, you have to judge them in other ways such as what do they do? Are they positive? Are they negative? Like love, compassion, all those good things are positive. War, hate, racism, murder, people who take more than they give – that’s bad rhythm. Health is good rhythm. Disease means you’re out of rhythm. I’m sure all musicians want to play technically good and so do I, but I try to separate the ritual from the technical. You have to be technically good to create good ritual. These are very gray lines – one person’s spirit is another person’s non-spirit. So this is a very individual thing.

RO: You’ve been exposed to a wide variety of spiritual influences from that found in Indian and African music, to Tibetan monks, to the shamanistic spirituality of Carlos Santana to the mythological and bigger picture spirituality of Joseph Campbell. How would you describe your current spiritual worldview.

Mickey Hart: Well I know who my God is. If there is a Creator, it’s a rhythm. In the vibratory universe, the seed sound is the creation of everything. And in that sound, in that rhythm, you find what some people would call spirituality or the sacred dimension. There was nobody up there that said, “make this [life] happen.” This came out an arrhythmic event 10 billion years ago like I write about in the books. Now I’m really starting to really study the planet and listening to what they say through radio telescopes – making music with the universe. It’s led me back to the seed sound and that’s what I’m exploring now – dealing with the fabric of the universe and how to make contact with it and interact with it intelligently.

RO: Last year we spoke with your friend Zakir Hussain and he went into some details about rituals and cleansing before performing. You say you practice every day to stay in shape, is there anything ritualistic or ceremonial in regards to your warm-ups or preparations to perform that you’d be willing to share with us?

Mickey Hart: Sure. I always feel my heartbeat. I work out in the morning doing my cardio routine and then on the way to the studio (which I go to everyday) I start focusing on me and my heart beat, my rate. Even when I’m walking I feel the pulse. That gives me a place to start. Like as I’m talking to you now, I’m feeling my pulse. It’s something that I refer to from time to time. I always try to start there. I warm up a lot for long periods of time before I actually commit to the drum. I prepare myself and warm up really slow and long. I like taking an hour and half in my warm-up before I really go after a drum.

RO: Let’s talk about 1991’s Planet Drum CD where you convened some the world’s finest percussionists and musicians together. What were your intentions in gathering these particular artists to record that groundbreaking album?

Mickey Hart: I knew them all individually but they didn’t know each other. One night in the middle of the night I popped up and realized that I’m sitting on top of the mountain here. This is the Promised Land. I made the calls and one by one I introduced them to each other. They all showed up, turned on the microphones and let it all pour out. It was certainly musical magic. All the tracks were first takes, one person started playing and the next person related to it. I told them the mission was that we weren’t going for solos, we were going for the deep drumming groove and to entrain. They all could relate to that and that was history. That was really percussive history.

RO: Was it surprising the response the CD received?

Mickey Hart: Not in my world! [laughs] I thought everything we did could sell a million records. No… yes, of course it was. Winning the Grammy and being 26 weeks at #1 and touring and selling hundreds of thousands of CDs was gratifying. It also elevated percussion into a whole new realm where it was respected as an instrument equal to melody and harmony. It was musical.

RO: So you repeated it again this year with your Grammy for Global Drum Project?

Mickey Hart: Yeah, we did it again this year and now we’re working on a new one. That’s what I’ll be doing as soon as finish this interview.

RO: Earlier this year the Tibetan Chants for World Peace album you produced with the Gyoto Monks Tantric Choir was at the top of the Amazon and iTunes charts…

Mickey Hart: [laughs] Yeah, can you imagine that! I thought when that happened, I had seen everything. Here we’ve got a choir of monks from Tibet singing three notes each that is on the top of the charts. I never thought I’d live to see this. It made my day!

RO: What did that experience teach you, bringing the monks into the studio?

Mickey Hart: Well I’ve been doing it since 1987 and it’s rewarding beyond words, sitting there letting the chants wash over you. I think it’s very self-serving on my part. In some ways isolating them and listening to them for hours, having the privilege of being with these wonderful people, turns you into a speck of dust. It puts you in your proper perspective in the universe and is always a thrill. But this one was over the top because they allowed me to overdub themselves on themselves. We created a choir of over 110 or 120 voices. That hasn’t been heard outside the monasteries of Tibet since the 50s because there aren’t that many chanting monks now and they don’t do these giant rituals in Dharamsala, where most of them reside. Any day listening to the chants of the Gyoto Tantric Choir is a good day for me.

RO: Do you believe there’s still music and rhythms on the planet that we haven’t been made aware of yet?

Mickey Hart: There are rhythms being born as we speak - new rhythms being born in places we know of and places we don’t know of. That’s the way of music. That’s the way of things – they either grow and become relevant and serve the community or they die. Yes, there are new rhythms being born constantly and they’re mutations actually. Almost all music on this planet is a mutation or hybrid of something else that came before.

RO: What’s next for you, Mickey?

Mickey Hart: I’m after the sound of the universe, that’s where I’m going now.

www.mickeyhart.net

www.facebook.com/mickeyhart

Special thanks to Rose Soloman and Dennis McNally

Mickey Hart photo by John Werner