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Taken from Youth Activism (June 27, 2001)
Michael Franti
by Youth Activism
Michael Franti - Photo by Linda Wolf |
Thirty-four year old, songwriter and producer Michael Franti is one of the most uncompromising activists working on progressive issues today. After dropping out of college basketball in 1987 to found The Beatnigs, Franti and collaborator Rono Tse's Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy broke America's trance with the revolutionary hip-hop album Hiphoprisy Is The Greatest Luxury (1992). Franti's latest group Spearhead (www.spearheadvibrations.com), which has released Home (1994), Chocolate Supa Highway (1997), and Stay Human (2001), fuses jazz, funk, reggae, and hip-hop with deeply personal politics and universal themes. Live At The BadBab (2000) documents his spellbinding spoken word tours. Franti has worked with Angela Davis' Critical Resistance organization for prison reform, the Spitfire Tour, Mumia 911 (on behalf of prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal), Cuba's Music Bridges project, and founded San Francisco's Blak Militia recording studio. Franti says, "I'm not so much into education as I am into inspiration."
My mother was a teacher. She's retired now, but she used to teach school in Davis, California and before that in Berkeley. She taught elementary school and in a school for the blind. I was given up for adoption as an infant and raised in a family of white parents who adopted other black children. I never really felt fully a part of the family or a part of the community that I was in. So, I identified with the underdog from an early age.
When I was twenty I had a son and began to want to find out who my birth parents were. After a couple years' search I met them. My mother's white and my father's black. They never got married. My mother's family is very racist. She thought that I never would have had a chance coming out of the box in that family. So that's why she gave me up.
So, during my life as a child and then also now as an adult I've really tried to first search for my roots and then, in a more spiritual journey, for my ancestors. And at the same time, being a father I'm looking toward the next generation. So that's where my inspiration comes from. I felt loss and shame growing up. I've learned better now.
First thing, I give voice to my emotions. When I'm alone I write or I sing or I talk about my fears to myself and I try to be self-examining, and of course I voice my emotions a lot on stage. I try to be self-examining, so that helps me to prepare for my time in front of a crowd. I found that the more vulnerable I am in that position, the more receptive people are. Some people think it's the opposite ? they put on clothes and speak loudly so they will scare the audience into liking them or agreeing with them. But if you allow yourself to be vulnerable, that fear subsides and the people become gracious toward you.
When I was a teenager, my father drank a lot. He was an alcoholic. Sometimes I'd listen to my parents fight and it would be very, very painful to me and I'd go in my room and start to shut it all down. When I became 17 years old, one night I came home late. I was supposed to be home right at midnight but I got there at 12:10. I knocked on the door; my father came to the door and he said, "Who is it?" I said, "It's Michael." And he said, "Michaelwho?" (knowing full well who it was). I said, "It's Michael, your son." He said, "I don't have a son Michael. My son comes home on time." And I said, "Oh, no. Dad's been drinking."
So my mother came to the door and told him to let me in, which he finally did, and then he started yelling at me. He started to get very aggressive, like he did when he was drinking. We were about to go to blows practically and it was the first time I ever thought that I'd hit my dad. I was big and strong enough to really hurt him, and I'm glad I never did. My sister came in and starting throwing every bit of wine bottle and glass at him and told him to throw it in the garbage. And my dad got real upset and told me "If you can't live by the rules of this house, just go." So I just bolted. I ran away with the intention of never coming back.
I stayed with a friend whose father had been in AA. He father said, "You know, if you really want things to be better in your life, you're going to have to confront your father." So a couple days later we went back to my house and sat down with my whole family. This guy, this friend of mine's dad, said to my father, "Do you think you have a drinking problem?" And my dad said, "I've been an alcoholic for nine years and I don't give a shit." I was crying. I said, "Well, I give a shit." I'd left the house right after that, so I never got to know him until about last year. He eventually went on to AA, and stopped drinking. Later he had a stroke and went through a miraculous recovery as a result of his connection with spirit. Now he's a completely different person. He's loving. He's expressive of his emotions.
The reason I'm going through all this is because I think it's important for young people to remember ? as tons of teachers tell you through their actions or their words directly ? they don't give a shit about you. There's times the police tell you they don't give a shit about you. And there's your parents, the system, everything says "We don't give a shit about young people." And they show it to us every day by virtue of the fact that we as young people are 25% of the population but they don't give us 25% of federal funding to do things that we need. They take all that money and put it into prisons; take the money out of schools, take it away from everything that could possibly be good for us.
But it's important for us to remember in our hearts that in times in our lives when people don't give a shit ? that in our hearts we say, "You know what? I give a shit." And sometimes that comes out in a way that isn't very positive. But sometimes we take that energy of giving a shit and instead of turning it on people who are fucking with us, we turn it on ourselves and we do self-destructive things. And it's important to recognize that we have that spark and that feeling that we have when we say, "You know what? I give a shit." It's something that you're going to carry your entire life.
Sometimes you may close it in and not choose to look at it, and other times it might just come out in a negative way and sometimes you can harness it. You can say, "I'm going to take this energy and I'm going to use it for something good, for me." With all the problems young people are facing ? the materialism that we become addicted to, the violence that we become addicted to, the drugs we become addicted to ? I recognize in all of that there's something that wants to come out of us. It's: " I care, and I want other people to care about me."
Sometimes the fact of the matter is the world is not going to care about you. You have to find something in yourself and within your circle of friends to support one another to be able to survive and to still remain a loving person. Because the alternate to that is to become an adult who did the same things to the next generation of youth. And that's the last thing I'd like to say: We don't want to become shining examples of the system we set out to destroy. We want to create a new way; a new model of togetherness.
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