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Taken from X-Press Online (December, 2001)
Michael Franti - Shock The Nation
by CHELSEA HUNTER
 Driving through the Californian desert, doing interviews on his mobile phone, Michael Franti is preparing once again to head south of the equator to rock the nation. The last Perth performance saw Franti, with his group Spearhead, command the stage of Metro City for three hours of rap, roots, soul and reggae all in tumbled into one mighty fine package that left the midweek crowd begging for more.
Thanks to the indomitable spirit of the music, combined with Franti's impassioned soliloquies (delivered while his six foot six frame paces the stage like a lion), word about Spearhead shows has spread like wildfire. Their touring schedule has begun to include more and more countries as people want to become part of the enthusiasm and fervour of a typical show.
The greater profile has meant that Franti has been able to turn the cult of celebrity into an opportunity to take the messages of his songs and deliver them personally to the masses by organising and participating in various rallies and benefit concerts that raise awareness about various issues, including speaking out about the insanity of the death penalty. Television may still be the drug of the nation, but if Franti has his way, he may just turn it into a course of antibiotics.
How long have you been on this particular tour?
About five hours.
You must be fresh as a daisy then.
Yeah, it is the first five hours of a six and a half week tour. For the first part we're in the snow area, like snowboard places and then we come down to see y'all in the summertime and then we come back and finish the tour in the snow. It was very difficult to pack (laughs). Last summer I started this newdiscipline where I take just one small suitcase, not even a big suitcase, just one that I can fit in the overhead compartment on an airplane and that is all I have. I have two days worth of clothes and I wash my clothes. And now I had to bring another bag on this trip because I've got like snowboarding pants and jacket. But it was pretty intense thinking OK well I'm gonna be in winter then I'm gonna be in the summer so I gotta make sure I have a couple of pairs of shorts plus a jacket.
I read recently that you were involved in the Spitfire Tour in the US. What was the purpose behind the benefit concert that went with it?
The Spitfire Tour was the tour for artists, activists and other entertainers who were speaking out about global affairs. Ice T was on the tour and I often joked that Ice T knew an incredible amount about global affairs because he had had an affair with a woman in every country (laughs). It was a tour where we would try to engage young people, university aged people, in getting involved in social activism and somebody had an idea that young people listen to people who are musicians and actors and that it would be good to have musicians and actors speaking to kids about things that were important to them.
The tour was successful in some ways and in other ways it wasn't that successful because I always felt like I often spoke about the death penalty and the prison industry when I was out on that tour but there are so many people that I work with on a daily basis who are involved in the same work that I do with the death penalty who are 'waaaay' more knowledgeable than I am and I had wished that those people were the people that were there to speak. But it's like that whole thing of celebrity bringing people out, it is an unfortunate thing.
Perhaps there will be those who are prepared to look deeper into the issue simply because you have raised it, and they will then adopt the cause for themselves.
Yeah, and I think that is part of the responsibility, I was hearing someone speak the other day and they were speaking about the difference between a celebrity and a liberator, and a celebrity is someone who attracts attention to themselves and then it just stops there and a liberator is somebody who takes that attention and energy and tries to refocus it on something that helps other people out. I try to do that.
Is it a fine line to walk between celebrity and liberator? Obviously for yourself you fall into the latter category but is it hard not to get swept up in the madness of being a celebrity?
Ummm, well luckily for me, no-one plays my music enough for me to actually become legitimately famous like some other people who are on the tour (laughs). But it still does make you question the ego. Some days you feel really happy about yourself, really good because other people are telling you that you are good and usually when you start to feel that way that little house of cards that you built gets blown over by the smallest gust of wind and you realise that, you know what? I'm just me. Whatever anybody else says about me whether it's positive or negative has very little to do with me being honest with myself about my strengths and my weaknesses. So it just requires getting back to me being myself.
I have a morning practice that I do, I meditate and then after my meditation I write out my fears and my anxieties and there is another column of my resentments and the final column is my gratitude, things that I am grateful for, people that I am grateful for. What that does for me is that when I'm on the road I'm on the tour bus, I go to soundcheck, do a show and we try to keep the set changing every night so that musically it stays fresh but then you're back on the tour bus, back to soundcheck, back to the show. The days seem to run together. But when I write, I wake up in the morning and I realise that you know what? Today my list of resentments is really long and I'm having a hard time finding anything to be grateful for and then other days I realise that I am so grateful for so many things, I'm not feeling fears about the world or fears about my life like I was the day before and it is a great way of checking in with myself about how I am doing emotionally and what I am feeling. That makes my life feel like I am living and it helps me to get through difficult periods of my life.
The things that you write down, do many of them get turned into songs?
Well maybe not literally but they all tend to find their way into songs anyway. If I am feeling fear about things in my life and some of those fears are large external fears like what is happening with the bombing in Afghanistan, then other times it is just like I fear going into the studio and not being able to come up with anything good today. So those emotions come through in the songs. Same thing with the gratitude, some days I am really grateful for the fact that I have a decent place to live and the fact that I have a nice family. Other days I am just grateful for breath, grateful for being able to drag myself out of bed that morning because I am having a hard time.
Do you get many chances to get involved in benefit concerts like the Spitfire Tour and the Fifth Cuban Rap Festival and Colloquium.
Yeah, I've been to Cuba a couple of times, making music. With our band and our manager and office, we have a body of volunteers that we meet with regularly and we plan events in San Francisco, we put on concerts that are raising awareness for various issues, against the death penalty, we put on a concert right after September 11 that was declaring San Francisco a hate free zone because there was a lot of hatred that was coming out against Muslim people and so we are always doing different organising things in the community, mostly in the Bay area in San Francisco where we live and we have a great family of volunteers who come together and participate in organising events and it is kind of nice that our music has inspired that in other people and that it has taken on its own life now.
How did you first get involved in campaigning against the death penalty?
The death penalty is the closest thing I have ever done in being involved in a really active political organisation. I was voted onto the board of directors for the National Coalition to end the death penalty and that is the closest thing that I have ever been involved in that was really like a political organisation but I have been involved in a lot of beat level activism from my whole career in music, I have always performed that protest, I have always been involved in organising at least the musical side of activism.
But where did the desire come from to publicly state that the death penalty is something that you are totally opposed to?
Well, when I was born, my mother is white, my father is black and my mother and my father never got married. My mum gave birth to me but her family was very racist and she thought that I would never have a chance coming out of the box, so she gave me up for adoption. I was raised in a family with white parents who had also adopted a black child and I never felt comfortable in the family I was raised in, my father was an alcoholic and I didn't have a really happy childhood but because I felt like I never fit in I have always identified with other people who don't feel like they fit in. Always identified with the underdog in any situation and speaking on behalf of the underdog and always tried to recognise and not just be tolerant of diversity, but celebrate it and honour and respect diversity. The diversity that exists between cultures, between genders, between sexual preferences also the diversity that is within each of us. Some of us like to paint, some of us like to take walks, some of us enjoy making music, some of us enjoy cooking. There is a diversity that exists within each of us as individuals as well as communal and world wide diversity. So the death penalty is to me the ultimate question of compassion. Does any of us have the right to kill in any situation? I don't believe that any of us does. None of us has the ability to make that decision.
Where does the movement against the death penalty stand in America at the moment, is it something that is gaining momentum and acceptance?
Well the anti death penalty has made a lot of strides in the past 10 years. At the beginning of the nineties there was a poll that said there was 80% approval in America for the death penalty. Then there was another poll before the last election and it was 59%. So it has dropped but at the same time what is happening with the bombing in Afghanistan to me is the ultimate death penalty. No-one is really quite sure who did the attack in New York, people have a suspicion who did it yet we are willing to go and destroy villages and cities in this country because we believe that maybe they are harbouring the people who are responsible. Thousands of people are dying and it is not right.
You had your family with you last time you were in Australia, is that something that you are able to do often, have them with you on tour?
Yeah, they are with me most of the time. My wife and my youngest son are usually with me, they are not here at the moment but next week they will be coming out and they'll be coming down to Australia with me. It is good, it is important. At times it is difficult for me to have the added responsibility of looking after a child and then also maintaining contact with my wife on an intimate level. Sometimes it adds more to my daily life on the road but then when they are not here I miss them and go through periods of loneliness.
And that's when the list of regrets are longer.
Yeah, the glamorous life of the rock star.
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