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Taken from TheScene (July 6, 2001)
Michael Frant & Spearhead
Contributed by:
Michael Franti has wowed the world as the rapper with a conscience - from the pop-onslaught of ‘Television, the Drug of a Nation’, the 1991 release from the acclaimed Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy, to the emotionally charged verbal barrage of Spearhead’s recent release, ‘Stay Human’, Franti’s ode to America’s penal system.
For those who are new to Spearhead’s game, they’ll be welcomed by a somewhat down-tempo, jazzy, hip hop affair. But for those accustomed to Franti’s ravings as he battles his way through album releases and worldwide concerts, these people may find his new approach to be more subtle and less angst-ridden than in the past, alleging that today’s Spearhead is a toned-down version of Franti’s convictions, for gone are the images of Franti standing before a military tank. “People often say that to me and I think they’ve totally got it wrong,” Franti maintains. “My activism over the years has become more radical and has increased more and more in terms of the fact that I do a lot more stuff now. I was at the WTO protest in Seattle and we played three concerts there during the week and I was at the Republican and the Democratic national convention protests. I was at the FTAA protests back a couple of weeks ago and I’m speaking in prisons a lot and doing all these things. In the past I wrote about political stuff but I wasn’t nearly as involved in the activist side of things… I want people to pay attention, I want people to be absorbed by the music and hear something that they wouldn’t normally listen to. When I was just yelling at the top of my lungs some people were like ‘I don’t wanna fucking hear it.’”
Stay Human Cover |
Released last month, Stay Human, recorded at Spearhead’s ‘Sugar Shack’ and the first studio release on their label Boo Boo Wax, tells the story of Sister Fatima, an activist who has been falsely accused of murder and now awaits her moment on death row. The album is set up as a radio show complete with listener call-ins, DJs and the state governor played by that other American with a conscience, Woody Harrellson. “Woody and I have been friends for the past couple of years,” explains Franti, “and when I talked to him about this record and I asked if he was willing to play the part [of the Governor], I knew that he could nail the part. Also, I knew that Woody has been involved with a lot of the same issues that I’ve been involved in. And having him do it wouldn’t just be like finding some actor or a person who wasn’t believing what was going on. The woman who plays Sister Fatima, she was a Black Panther for a long time in America and her Boyfriend, George Jackson was one of the leaders of the Black Panthers - he was killed by the FBI. So I knew that these were people who, when called upon if interviewed or asked questions about why they did it, they would have some substance behind why they chose to get involved.
“All the characters in the story, from the DJs to the people who are calling in, the Governor, Sister Fatima are all metaphors of the world today. Sister Fatima’s character is based on a number of high profile cases like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and other people who have been very, obviously wrongly accused political prisoners in America. But really, her character is about the injustice of the prison system in America.”
With such an emotionally-charged topic, Franti doesn’t hold back the verbal barrage when asked about his country’s fascination with its death penalty. And while Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, the country’s latest homage to ‘keeping the scum of them thar streets,’ was waiting in his death row cell last month, Spearhead was on tour, far away from the spectacle. “I wish I was in America right now to see the dialogue that is taking place,” Franti laments from a hotel room in Germany. “There are a lot of people who are just like, ‘let’s fry that motherfucker…’ Anytime somebody kills 150-160 people in a bombing it sucks and it’s wrong and it’s immoral. Whether it takes place in Oklahoma or in Iraq or in Vietnam or in any other place where bombings routinely have taken place, killing is wrong. And I believe that, as human beings, we need to find non-violent ends to violence.
“When I was a kid I used to say, ‘the death penalty’s wrong ‘cause what if they got the wrong guy and what if the wrong guy happens to be me?’ And as a black man living in America, that is part of my experience, being the wrong guy. But as I got older, I started to realise that the death penalty’s wrong for one simple truth - none of us has the right to kill. Whether we’re gang-banging in our neighbourhoods, whether we’re dropping bombs on other countries or whether we’re granting the state the right to kill its own citizens. It’s not a solution, it’s revenge. And what Timothy McVeigh says is that he was exacting revenge for a situation that took place in Waco, Texas. So where does it end? Now we kill this one and we’re gonna have other people who are seeking revenge for the death of Timothy McVeigh. America’s like the only western industrial nations that still has the death penalty.”
Ah America – “The land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Long before Spearhead, Franti began his career performing acappella-esque spoken word using prose he had penned at anti-apartheid rallies in the 80s. Musically, it was as bass player for the Beatnigs in the 80s that he first encountered such inspirations as the Dead Kennedy’s Jello Biafra on whose label, Alternative Tentacles, the Beatnigs released their first and only album. “He came to one of our concerts and he was in the middle of this whole censorship trial over the Frankenchrist album. He was actually under attack by Tipper Gore, Al Gore’s wife. This was in 1985-86. It was just a huge censorship trial and they raided his house and they were trying to get him on all of these crazy ridiculous charges,” laughs Franti. Soon, the Top 40 charts were overwhelmed with Franti’s scathing attack on that holiest of all hallowed territories, Television. Ironic that the Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy was asked to tour with U2 on their Zoo TV Tour. Following the demise of the Disposable Heroes, Spearhead was formed in San Francisco in 1993. The band’s debut release, ‘Home’ is considered one of the first rap releases that has featured the subject of AIDs. With the album in tow, Spearhead traipsed throughout the world with Ben Harper, the Fugees and the Brand New Heavies expounding their many varied words for what amounted to a two-year promotional tour. And with 1997’s ‘Chocolate Super Highway’, the world truly pricked up its ears, en masse, to Spearhead.
On the eve of an Australian tour, Michael Franti is unlikely to be turned down for a visa due to his barbed observations. He nonetheless acknowledges the weight of his words. As a rapper, a musician, a black American with a voice that is broadcast over the airwaves he sees it as a social responsibility shared by many world-wide who are moved by issues of race, religion, poverty, gender and sexuality. “My words are just coming out of a larger movement that’s already taking place. There’s nothing that I’m saying in my songs that there aren’t already tens of thousands of people saying. But what I hope to do with my music and where I feel music really has its power is that it gives life to the emotions in the music. It allows people who are feeling something in their heart to get that feeling out into the world and that’s how change begins. I don’t think that people are going to necessarily change their minds upon hearing my [music] but I think that it will provide seeds and provoke.”
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