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Taken from BostonHerald (October 15, 2003)
Rapper Franti spearheads movement to acoustic sound
by Larry Katz
 When does a 6-foot-6 rapper feel inadequate?
When a bunch of singer/songwriters hand him a guitar.
"I had gone on a trip to Cuba a few years back with about 25 other American musicians," says Michael Franti, who plays tomorrow night at the Somerville Theatre with his band Spearhead.
"We were collaborating with about 25 Cuban musicians at this Music Bridges festival. Every night people would be sitting around the picnic table singing these beautiful songs into the night, people like Bonnie Raitt, the Indigo Girl, Peter Frampton.
"When they passed the guitar to me, I'd tap the back of it and play a beat and try to rhyme on top of it."
Franti laughs. "I came back home and said, `I never want to be caught again in a situation where I can't play at least one song on the guitar. The experience kinda shamed me into learning to play."
The results of Franti's determination to learn guitar can be heard on his latest album with Spearhead, "Everyone Deserves Music".
The ever-evolving Franti has gone from his start doing industrial-punk-rap with the Beatnigs to angry political rap as half of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy to, for the past 10 years, putting his socially conscious rapping on top of Spearhead's mix of hip-hop and r & b.
But with "Everyone Deserves Music," Franti has turned a page. He barely raps at all. He's not only written a whole album of guitar-based pop-rock-r & b songs, he's become a singer.
"When we started making this album," Franti, 37, says from a Cleveland hotel, "I really had just started getting into acoustic guitar. I learned to play by asking anybody I knew who played to show me a chord here, a chord there.
"It really changed the way I wrote songs," he says. "In the past, we would come up with a beat and I would rhyme on top of it. Now we sit down with guitars and create chord structures and melodies for me to sing."
Where does he get the confidence to suddenly start singing in front of audiences?
"I read somewhere that more people fear speaking in public than fear death," Franti says. "I'd venture to say that singing in public is even scarier. It is hard. But I've had lots of experience performing as a spoken-word artist. That's actually where I started singing. I found while I was doing spoken word that it was much more intesting if I sang parts of what I was performing.
"I don't consider myself to be a naturally talented musician. But I really enjoy it. I don't mind sitting for hours and hours working on a song, trying to learn my parts. I learned early on that in order to stay creative, you have to remain a student of music."
And from the sound of "Everybody Deserves Music," Franti is a student of Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder.
"All of those artists have been big influences on me," he says, "because they were able to write songs about very serious issues, but were able to make them danceable, listenable and beautiful. At the end of the day you felt inspired, like the world was still a place worth struggling for. That's what I want to do with my music."
Franti intended "Everybody Deserves Music" as a post-9/11 pick-me-up. But it also includes "Bomb the World," a sweetly scathing critique of the Bush administration's use of military force in the Middle East: "We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace."
"I wanted to express a lot of emotions that a lot of us feel since 9/11," Franti says, "the anger, pain, frustration, the fear about the future. I address my feelings about the war in Iraq, too. But in the end, I wanted to leave people feeling inspired and uplifted. I tried to make music that encourages people to shine on."
Franti has flipped the commerical hip-hop formula. He preaches a self-effacing brand of loving kindness and service to others. You won't find him showing off a mansion with a garage full of Hummers on MTV's "Cribs."
But then, you won't find him rapping much these days either.
"We're like a hip-hop jam band at this point," Franti says. "We have a lot of fans who also go see Phish or Galactic or Soulive. Our fans are into conscious hip-hop. That's the scene we're in."
Michael Franti and Spearhead with Lifesavas & the Foundation play tomorrow at 7:30 at the Somerville Theatre. Call 617-625-4088.
( E-mail: Lkatz@bostonherald.com. )
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