Enchanting Spirit of Buddhism : Music: Drummer for Grateful Dead backs Tibetan monks of Gyuto Tantric Choir, which will perform at USD’s Camino Hall.

The 17 Buddhist monks of the Gyuto Tantric Choir are nearing the end of their third U.S. tour. Since September, the deep, grinding sound of their chants has resonated in 21 theaters and halls nationwide.

“They will rattle your bones,” said Mickey Hart, the choir’s ardent fan and promoter, who is better known as the drummer for the Grateful Dead.

Hart and a few of his rock band colleagues formed the Society for Gyuto Sacred Arts in the late 1980s to support the monks’ efforts to draw international attention to persecution in Tibet. The Society joins San Diego’s Center for World Music in presenting the choir at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Shiley Theatre of the University of San Diego’s Camino Hall.

Tibet was annexed by the Chinese in 1950. It has since periodically experienced devastating attacks by Chinese Communists. In the 1959 Tibetan uprising, 10,000 people reportedly died. A few monks escaped with their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to northern India, where they have been living in exile.

The loss of lives, the destruction of thousands of monasteries, temples and religious art, the massive deforestation and burning of libraries have nearly wiped out a culture.

Hart believes the music of the monks is endangered. Along with his rock music career, he documents and produces world music for the Rykodisc label, music he hopes to preserve, such as African drumming, and Egyptian and Arabic folk music, and “music of the rain forests,” for example.

“When a culture is threatened with extinction, the first thing that goes is the music. In music, you have the folk tales, drama, and history of a culture. This (Tibetan chanting) is sacred. It is the teeth of Tibetan music.”

When the monks are chanting, Hart explained, “they are reciting Sanskrit text and slightly camouflaging it for Western audiences. They are deep in prayer and hope--to make a better world. They empty their body and refill it, inviting in their deities through prayer, and sending them out to do good, to re-create the world as it could be.”

Centuries old, Tibetan Buddhist chanting was not heard outside monastery walls until 1965. The sound is a raspy, gravelly, rhythmic chewing at the lowest range of the human voice. Instrumental sounds from bells, drums, cymbals and horns are sprinkled in. The result is not melodic, nor even musical, in the Western sense, and is not meant to be. As a visualization of deities through meditation, the chanting can roar or pulse faintly, and, for their performances, the monks use a sophisticated sound system donated by the Grateful Dead.

“They are truly amazing,” Hart cooed affectionately. “Close your eyes, leave behind your prejudices. This is not music, it’s vibration. After an hour of their sound, you’ll be different, cleaner, lighter. And you don’t have to know anything about the religion. This is not a religious experience. The chanting doesn’t make you want to sign up to be a Buddhist. But it’s an incredible view of a culture hidden from us for 600 years.”

Hart became interested in the monks in 1968, a year after becoming part of the Grateful Dead. (“You don’t join the Dead, it joins you,” he quipped.) “I received an anonymous tape of the monks and would listen to it to come down from Grateful Dead shows.”

He finally met the group in 1985, when the Massachusetts Buddhist Society brought them to the United States. Hart took them to the West Coast that year, and, in 1987, brought them back for a tour and to record “Freedom Chants from the Roof of the World.”

Members of the Gyuto Choir range in age from early 20s to 60s.

“Chanting is not for wimps,” Hart said. “They start when they are kids, 4 to 6 years old. It takes a robust body to maintain their chants over the hours. They are strong-willed in mind and body, and delight in the rigors.”

Hart emphatically added that the monks are a lot of fun. “They aren’t somber, hooded monks, but very much of this world--light, joyful. They celebrate life and teach you the impermanence of it. . . . I love the monks. I can hear them for months in my ears after they’ve gone. I hear them in the tires of trucks, in blenders, neon signs--wherever there’s vibration, little traces of hum, I’m with them in spirit.”

The monks “pack in and pack out” for their performances and go off in vans to the next venue, he said. “It’s rigorous, like rock ‘n’ roll. . . . They’re rock ‘n’ rollers,” he said, laughing.

There’s no comparison, of course, between the teamwork of the holy men, which is spiritual practice, and the “traveling circus scene” of the Grateful Dead, a rock band institution with a crew and staff of 60 that Hart jokingly dubbed “simple sound-sharing apes of the Myocene.” (Two weeks ago the band drew a crowd of 300,000 in Oakland, Hart said.)

The two groups are apparently simpatico, nevertheless.

“We’ve turned them on to Otis Redding, and they like Crosby, Stills and Nash. We brought them to a Dead concert once, and they liked us--they liked the light and sound. But they go right back to their prayer. They know who they are and what they have to do.”

The Gyuto Tantric Choir, presented by the Center for World Music, the University of San Diego, and the Society for Gyuto Sacred Arts, performs at 3 p.m . Sunday at USD’s Shiley Theatre in Camino Hall. Tickets are $12. Call TicketMaster, ( 619 ) 276-TIXS. For more information, call ( 619 ) 729-0745.