Billy Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart and Ali Akbar Kahn

9-15-1968

Ali Akbar College of Music

San Rafael, CA

Source: Maxell Metal cassette unknown gen

Transfer: Cassette > Nakamichi CR-5A > Edirol FA-66 > Wavelab 2448 > CD-Wave (24bit output) > TLH > FLAC 2448  Transferred by Andrew F. 12/2020

01 Drums

Notes by NFAGDTRFB after doing the transfer:

On the tape, I hear one tabla player, someone else on the bass-style drum, then probably a third person switching back and forth. The tape was labeled "Billy, Mickey, and Ali Akbar Kahn, 9/15/68". Kahn was a sarrod player, not a percussionist. Speculation that this was recorded at the school/studio that Kahn and Gosh ran in San Rafael around that time seems plausible.

http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/01/september-20-1968-berkeley-community.html

September 20, 1968: Berkeley Community Theater

In 1968 Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead was studying at the Ali Akbar College of Music with Tabla Master Shankar Ghosh. Mickey would work on compositions with Shankar which included Rhythmic Cycles of 4, 6, 16, 5 and 7, and take these teaching to Bill Kreutzmann. Mickey and Bill were instructing Shankar on traps in exchange for Tabla lessons, and would combine their knowledge in compositions of East and West.

In September of 1968 the Grateful Dead played a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater. Before the concert the drummers had planned a surprise for the audience. During part of "Alligator", the G.D. amps rolled apart and two risers rolled on stage between Mickey and Bill. On them were Shankar Ghosh and Vince Delgado, a fine dumbec player and a student of Shankar's. The four men sat and fixed compositions together, taking a rhythmic journey through many "Tals" or time cycles. Ali Akbar Khan composed the closing compositions for them and when they were finished, the applause was deafening.

(excerpt from the United Artists Diga Rhythm Band bio, May 1976)

https://www.dead.net/features/blair-jackson/blair-s-golden-road-blog-ravi-shankar-and-dead

After the arrival of Mickey Hart in the fall of ’67, however, the Dead consciously worked on Indian musical concepts for the first time as a band. After Phil turned Mickey onto an album that featured solo pieces by Shankar’s incomparable tabla player Alla Rakha, Mickey became obsessed with Indian music and in December 1967 arranged to meet Alla Rakha in New York City while the Dead were in town working on Anthem of the Sun and playing a few gigs.

In just one session throwing around musical ideas with Alla Rahka, Mickey learned the rudiments of Indian music’s complicated subdivisions of time, and he brought back his newfound wisdom to Dead rehearsals in January 1968. With the band suddenly investigating unconventional time signatures and rhythms, their music took off in startling new directions. “The Eleven” is one piece that came out of those rehearsals, but the group’s disciplined explorations of this new musical terrain spilled over into other songs and jams, too.

Later in ’68, Mickey hooked up with another tabla master, Pandit Shankar Ghosh, a rhythm instructor at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Marin County (founded by sarod master Ali Akbar Khan, with whom Ghosh often toured). Ghosh provided more formal training in Indian classical traditions, and shared the stage with Mickey at least once at a Dead concert—9/20/68 at Berkeley Community Theatre. (In the mid-’70s, Mickey formed the Diga Rhythm Band with Alla Rakha’s tabla-playing son, Zakir Hussain, who has been part of innumerable Mickey Hart projects since.)

Mickey Hart March 1981:

CL: What about Diga? I believe it's possible to trace their origins back to a Dead gig at the Greek Theater in Berkeley in 68?

MH: That's right. It was Vince Delgado on Dumbeck, Shahkar Ghosht , me and Kreutzmann. It was in the middle of Alligator, we rolled the amps apart, brought the risers forward and played, for a very long time.