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Taken from Times Online (September 28, 2008)
Power to the Peaceful: A noisy revolution
Michael Franti’s festival proves that musical protest can still be poignant
by Tim Cooper
Spearheading change: activists gather in Golden Gate Park |
The spirit of peace, love and musical protest is alive and well in its spiritual home, San Francisco. In Speedway Meadow, in Golden Gate Park, more than 60,000 men, women and children — and dogs — are soaking up the California sun, the aroma of marijuana and an outpouring of socially conscious messages from a succession of live bands. There are US servicemen from the pressure group Iraq Veterans Against the War backstage; Ziggy Marley and Spearhead are on stage; Tibetan Buddhists are giving seminars in a tent.
The annual Power to the Peaceful festival is the 21st-century face of musical protest. Founded in 1999 by Michael Franti, the one-time angry young rapper of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy turned globe-trotting musical activist, it takes in almost every social issue imaginable, from war and the death penalty to corporate greed and global warming. With the American presidential election only weeks away, politics is never far from the agenda. Girls in T-shirts bearing the slogan “Stop the Drama — Vote for Obama” walk past posters denouncing the Democratic candidate as a warmongering stooge of big business. And amid the ethnic jewellery and vegan food are more recycling bins than you’ve ever seen. Indeed, one of the most noticeable things about the festival is the lack of litter.
Franti is dedicated to the quaint conviction that music can change the world. His own sound has changed from angry hip-hop, with the Disposable Heroes, to a hybrid of rock, rap and reggae, with Spearhead; but his message, and fervour, remain undimmed. He started the free festival to highlight the allegedly wrongful conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was sentenced to death in 1981 for killing a policeman. He remains on death row, awaiting execution, and Power to the Peaceful’s message has broadened to ending all political violence.
Franti, 42, literally walks it like he talks it: since the turn of the century, he has chosen to walk barefoot as a symbolic protest against poverty. As well as his campaigning musical message on a dozen albums, he made the award-winning 2005 documentary I Know I’m Not Alone, for which he travelled around Iraq, Israel and Palestine, exploring the human cost of war.
Franti’s views were formed by his “outsider” status as a mixed-race child adopted by a white family with three children of their own. “I’ve always felt like I didn’t fit in — even at home,” he says, folding his 6ft 6in frame into a chair at his management office in a converted warehouse on the edge of the Mission district.
His musical and political awakening came as a teenager: “I remember very specifically, as a kid, hearing the lyrics to Grandmaster Flash’s The Message, and hearing the Clash and other music that, even if it didn’t say something directly political, at least said, ‘F*** the system, the system’s not responding.’ It gave me this healthy cynicism that you should think critically and question everything that you’re told.”
Sensibly, Franti is aware that there is little point in spreading a worthy message in the music if nobody gets to hear it. “I want it to be invitational first, confrontational second,” he quips, justifying his decision to adopt a more mainstream sound that might appeal to all corners of the globe.
His once confrontational attitude towards the establishment has also changed; his aim now is to get them on his side. “I don’t believe in ‘us and them’ politics any more,” he says. “My whole political youth was anticorporate, now it’s about how to get corporations involved. It’s not enough for us to sit around and complain that the corporate world controls all the money and resources in the world. We have to go to them and show them how they can apply their money and resources to make things change, show them that it’s as beneficial to them as it is to the people they are assisting.”
Corporate sponsors, however, are conspicuous by their absence from his festival. Franti, who spends most of the year at gigs and speaking engagements, raises PTTP’s £100,000 budget himself, through a combination of fundraisers and donations, though he confesses that “every year, I end up writing a cheque out of my own pocket”. In something of a payback for his decision to work with big business, a large portion of this year’s budget came from a fund-raising event hosted by a wealthy Republican businessman and his wife, who flew Franti to his home in Idaho. “They are conservatives, and Bush is their friend, but they don’t believe peace is a Republican or Democrat issue. They saw my film and thought there was truth in it, so they asked me to come and show it to 100 of their wealthy friends.” Franti flew home with some influential new fans — and £35,000 in donations.
Can music really change the world, though? “I think it already does,” he argues. “When we think of social change, we imagine it happening like an overnight revolution, but it doesn’t work that way. Things happen in the time it takes a tree to grow. Today, we’re planting the seeds that we hope will bear fruit for our kids 30 years from now.” In fact, he insists, there is plenty of evidence already of the change brought by music. “I’ve seen young hip-hoppers go on to have voices in their own community — black, white, Mexican — and become leaders there; people starting businesses that give back, working in government, in youth groups, empowering the community.”
So, can Franti see himself following his state’s governor out of the entertainment world into politics? Apparently not. Because politics is always about popularity and compromise? “Nah,” he drawls languidly. “Because I’d have to give up too much seedy and deviant rock’n’roll behaviour.”
All Rebel Rockers, by Michael Franti & Spearhead, is out now
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