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Taken from Arizona Daily Sun (August 06, 2015)
Unrestricted monk
by Douglas McDaniel
Michael Franti & Spearhead (2008). Courtesy photo |
Michael Franti, mastermind of the group Spearhead, has been pushing the frontiers of meditative influence in recent months, pushing the edges of performance for the cause of perfect calm. Indeed, now working outside the parameters of the rock ‘n’ roll traditions for booze, dope and righteous (or more often, outrageous) rebellion, Franti has in recent months been soothing his audiences with yoga sessions prior to the show, the culmination of a practice that began with his first yoga class on Sept. 12, 2001. Last year at Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside of Denver, Franti performed the acoustic accompaniment to a yoga class led by the famous power yogi Baron Baptiste. He has been merging his shows with the yoga vibe ever since. For example, this past weekend he performed at Wanderlust in Whistler, British Columbia, a five-day yoga, meditation and mindful-living festival.
“I think the two things go very well together,” Franti says during a recent telephone interview prior to his show in Flagstaff. The Red Rocks show was “super energy,” he adds, the product of 14 years of practicing yoga at different schools, playing guitar, and bringing what he’s learned to his shows. While Franti, who has been regarded as a high-minded globalist for most of the past 20 years, and who has a penchant for preferring to not wear shoes, has grown accustomed to playing before bigwigs at such events as presidential inaugurations—this month he further cemented his place in transcendental culture by playing at the Dalai Lama’s birthday party.
“The Dalai Lama has been a big leader for me, ever since I first heard about him in a Clash song (“Washington Bullets” off of Sandinista) in 1981,” Franti says. “I saw several films about him and studied the history of Tibet, how they converted the entire military into monks, and then I played at his birthday party, and the next day I was invited to play lunch, and actually got to meet him.”
According to accounts of the meeting, the six-foot six-inch tall Franti, with dreadlocks and tattoos, cut an imposing figure before the Tibetan religious leader, who said “his physical looks are quite heavy ... but when he plays ... Oh!”
Then came the one-on-one conversation that Franti says he will always remember.
“He told me, ‘You have a good heart. You would have become a monk, but for you to do that you will have to shave. But because you can’t do that, I will make you an unrestricted monk,’” Franti says.
After the meeting, the religious leader joked that his impression of Franti, who appeared to be a “strange person” is “much changed.”
Franti began his musical career as an angry-man sort in alternativeland after emerging from an unusual background in the 1980s. Coming from mixed ancestry—his mother had Irish, German and French ancestry, and his father was of African-American and Native American descent—he was an orphan who was adopted by a Finnish-American couple and went on to graduate from the University of San Francisco, where he first began writing poetry. After he began experimenting with rap and hip-hop, he was resourceful enough to get his songs played on a campus radio station. He also played in an industrial punk/spoken-word band called the Beatnigs, then found success with a politically charged band called the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.
It was during this time, as Franti formed Spearhead in 1994, that the band opened for U2. Franti says that watching Bono perform inspired him, especially the way Bono could get the crowd singing to vowel sounds in the choruses. Known today as an activist to funk, soul and hip-hop beats, Michael Franti wants his music and efforts in globetrotting to spread the positive message of human rights, leading him to speak out on the criminal justice system, AIDS, gay rights, poverty, drug addiction, the death penalty and suicide. But he does so less with topical announcements in song, looking more often for the transformative portion of the story.
He says a big moment when he softened his musical temperament was when he wrote a song called “Positive” while he was waiting for the results of an AIDS test. Though the results of the test were negative, he decided to write a more down tempo song in order to get the mood right.
“It needed to be told in a quieter voice in order to express the proper emotions,” he says. “I want people to be transformed by the music ... People are not moved to act by facts, figures or politics, but by the quality of their ideas. Like, for example, Martin Luther King when he said ‘I believe.’ People identify with that. Just to identify with that has power—if you want to reach people beyond the first row. That’s what I want to do.”
The members of Spearhead include versatile Bay Area guitarist J Bowman, multi-instrumentalist Raliegh Neal II, West African drummer Manas Itiene, and bassist Carl Young, who has been a member of Michael Franti & Spearhead for 21 years.
Prior to ascending the heights of the yoga-loving festival crowd this year, Franti tore the meniscus on his knee in January. He was out for six weeks, but the timetable for the impending tour meant he was hobbling on crutches when the show began. For the performer who is usually an active presence on stage, this was a lot to take.
“The first week of shows, I had to sit on a stool, and it was a challenge to be still,” he says. “I had to channel my inner John Lee Hooker.”
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