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Taken from Poparazzi (April 07, 2011)
The Unexpurgated Interview with Michael Franti
by Christopher Toh
My friends from Down Under, Mel & Mo, always used to tell me that I had to check out Michael Franti’s gigs. “Seriously, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen” is the response I usually get from them whenever I mention “Michael Franti”, “best gig in your life”,”do you remember?” or “hi!”
Anyway, he was in Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy (they toured with U2 during the Zoo TV era) and he’s spearheading Spearhead, who made waves with their album All Rebel Rockers, and the latest one, The Sound Of Sunshine.
And I had the opportunity to talk to man himself. So M & M, this is for you..!
Hi Michael, where are you at?
I just came back! I’m in San Francisco. In my bedroom! I was in LA yesterday, shooting a music video, and the day before I had a conference with the Secretary General of the United Nation, Ban Ki-Moon and his advisors. They were trying to bring the global millennium goal of the UN to people in film and music industry and to see if we could help promote those goals.
Wow. That must have been interesting!
I had dinner with Ban Ki-Moon and he said, “Yesterday I was meeting Gadaffi” and I said, “Yesterday I was picking up my son from school”!
So you’re father, musician, activist… who’s the real Michael Franti when you wear so many hats?
You have to have balance. And humour. One of the things we talked about making these messages about the UN issues was to be sexy to people, to be accepted by the mainstream – that this is a responsibility for all of us. And I think the way that you do that is to have a sense of humour. You have to keep people laughing, dancing, smiling and make the message come through that. If it’s just statistics and numbers, people will fall asleep.
So how do you make your songs sexy and mainstream?
I always try to make the songs have, uh, a great chorus that everyone can sing along with, and a groove and rhythm that everyone can dance to. But in the verses of the songs I want to plant seeds in there, I don’t want you to feel like I’m hitting you on the head with the message. I want the seeds to grow inside of you – inside your mind. I think that’s the stronger way to deliver the message than just beat people over the head with the idea.
You were previously with Beatnigs and Disposable Heroes, but only for a few years. You’ve been in Spearhead for he longest time. Is Spearhead your high-water mark?
I hope not! I hope I have room to grow. But my music changes every time I go to make a song. I try to make a new style, a new way of singing it. It’s evolved. It’s part of why I’ve had a long career but I think that’s also why I’ve not had any mainstream acceptance until recently, really with the last album, All Rebel Rockers. Up till then we were an underground group. But it’s been fun. I’m grateful for it. We never expected to have this big hit. We were this group that only some people knew about, then one day I’m walking in an airport and they’re playing my song. And people start coming to me and wanting my autograph, you know? It’s been a good time for us. We’re like musical farmers. We’ve been doing this for a very long time and now it’s starting to bear fruit. It’s nice.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt?
To make sure you’re nice to everyone that you meet. And to ask people what you can do to help them. And not ask what they can do to help you. That’s the key, I think, to longevity in any field, in any path of life. You have to make sure that the path you leave behind you is one with people smiling on it. When I started, I didn’t have that understanding. As you know, with Disposable Heroes, it was very message oriented, very strong message-oriented music, and there would be some who understood the message and wanted to take it in, but there would be others who’d turn their back on it because they didn’t want to hear it. But as I travelled around the world, I played on the street a lot, and when I went to Iraq in 2004, people would say to me, don’t play political songs, we don’t want to hear songs about war. We want to hear songs that will make us laugh and sing and cry and feel emotion. And that really stuck with me, that experience.
So that’s your personal philosophy?
I want to make people happy, I feel grateful that I have a job that allows me to do that. People have said to me, you know Michael, you connect with people so well, you should be a politician. And that’s a job I don’t want! You hope to make 51 per cent of the people happy all the time, and the rest of the 49 will hate you. But I think that today, we solve issues – the most important issues of today, the ones that we’ll look on in history – are about the climate and what’s happening with climate change. That’s not an issue of left or right or black or white or men or women – it’s just an issue of the planet, of all of us. And I know people say so what if we lose one species of butterfly or tree or something. But I’d like to think it’s like an aeroplane and we’re flying through the air. And well, maybe a screw can pop off the plane, but can 40 screws pop off, can 100 screws pop off and this thing still fly? At what point, does the aeroplane not fly anymore? That’s why every being on the planet is important. I mean, we’re moving towards 7 billion people. And in 10 or 15 years, it’s going to be 8 or 9 billion people. You’ve really got to think of these things.
Of course, you promote awareness of green issues, but going on tour leaves a huge carbon footprint doesn’t it?
As an artiste you have to be an example and not just say it. Otherwise other people can’t make it practical in their lives. We have, in the past, used bottled water in our shows. And we do over 200 shows a year and we had four cases of bottled water each night for our crew. That’s like 96 bottles of water every night. And if you calculate it over 200 shows that’s like 19,200 bottles or something. And if we did that every year, almost 20,000 bottles each year… But if we eliminated that and just give everybody a reusable container… And you can see how these things can add up over time.
So my friends have always told me I had to go see your show.
That’s nice of them!
But what can we expect for your gig in Singapore? What are you planning to do?
I’m so excited to play in Singapore. I have opened a small yoga hotel – I practise yoga everyday – and it’s in Bali, called Soulshine Bali, and so I’m always travelling to Singapore – but only to the airport! So I’m so happy to finally get to see more than just the sunflowers at the airport. Our show is really a party. It’s a high energy dance experience. We get the crowd singing along and my favourite part of the show is … well, I used to be a street musician and I like to get right in there with the crowd you know. And that’s part of what I do. I get my guitar and go out into the audience every night. That’s what I do!
Thank you very much Michael, for taking time out to talk.
Thank you! See you at the show!
Michael Franti performs on April 15 at the Timbre Rock & Roots festival. Tickets from Sistic.
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