Rebel without a pause

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he has just woken up from an overnight tour bus journey, but Michael Franti is a man who exudes inner calm and serenity. It wasn’t always so, yet this is an artist who has journeyed from the angry sentiments and harsh sounds of the Beatnigs and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy to the increasingly mellow and engaging environment of Spearhead, his latest band and currently on their fourth album.

“When I first started writing lyrics I just wanted to express my anger against the system,” he agrees, “so all my songs were basically fuck the system. I came to the realisation that the system doesn’t really listen to my songs, it’s not like George Bush is going to wake up tomorrow and go, ‘I heard this great Michael Franti record last night’, and go ahead and stop the war. Increasingly I’ve learnt that for those of us who engage in the struggle, the hardest thing is just to keep going every day, stay committed and hold love in our hearts and not become bitter people. That’s what I write songs for, on this record half are political songs and half are songs of inspiration.”

During their all too brief hey day, the Heroes were part of a likeminded musical community that stretched from Consolidated to Billy Bragg and U2. Some things, reckons Franti, may have changed but others have not. “In the past ten years music has changed so much, it’s now more available than water. You walk down the street, you hear cars playing music, people with boom boxes, music in stores is designed to get you to buy things. Yet there are still a handful of artists who write songs from the heart. I still feel a kinship with people like Billy, KRS 1, Ani Difranco.”

Like those kindred souls, Franti has always been considered an outsider but is it a description he would consider himself. He smiles broadly. “Yeah, I always have been. We do operate outside of the mainstream, but we find a way to do what we do year after year after year. We put on festivals, we do talks in schools, we play in prisons… all kinds of things.” That outsider status took a further step a few years back, when Spearhead left the comfort of the major label world to set up their own company.

“We would always do the same stuff but we were going one way and they were going the other. Being independent allows us to change the scale of economics, so that we can afford to do what we want to do. Most of the albums we sell over the internet or at gigs, so you only have to sell ten or fifteen thousand to break even as opposed to one or two hundred thousand.”

As well as battling against the state of the industry, Franti is also swimming against the tide of the music that inspired him in the first place. “It’s almost like a different art form now. Today hip-hop is trying to create this mythology of the perfect lifestyle. In the past, we were trying to put out a message about how the world could be, it could be possible that everybody in our neighbourhood could be uplifted, it could be possible that the police would stop beating people up, it could be possible that urban communities around the world – be they black, white or brown – the poorest people could rise up. Now the message is fuck the community, I want to get what’s mine.”

“On the underground, hip-hop still exists. Everywhere I go I see graffiti writing, I see breakdancing, I see DJing, now hip-hop poetry that is still really expressing the inner self of young people. It’s not to make money, it’s just to do it. That’s what I’m really proud of. Hip-hop has given us all a gift, it’s an international language. I meet Aboriginal kids who are using it to discuss their situation, Maori kids. They don’t have the intention to become huge pop stars, but they’re reflecting their situation.”

So does he have it in him to make another seething, angry hip-hop record? “Maybe at some point, but I’ve never wanted to make the same record twice so it wouldn’t be like the Disposable Heores or the Beatnigs. It might be more like a punk album or something. I’m still a punk, I’m still a hip-hop head, I’m part hippy. I’m all those things. I definitely resonate with the punk ethos of do it yourself and I see it as the same thing as kids who are in their basement with a turntable. I only know two chords but I’m going to say what I’m going to say. I only have a few records but I’m going to make a beat out of them and say what I’m going to say.” Whether it be via hip-hop, punk or whatever else takes his fancy, this is one man who the world should be listening to.