When Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy first unleashed the catch cry of ‘Television, the drug of the nation /Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation’ back in 1991, it seems that you would never get Michael Franti near a television studio. Yet the bands former front man and the current creative nexus of Spearhead is just minutes away from appearing on CNN. “I just grin and smile.” He says in response to my question regarding the aggressive nature of some television journalists. “Its the message that’s important.”
On a mobile phone high up on a mountain where the studios are located, the musician, activist and now filmmaker eagerly discusses music, touring, politics and the virtues of not wearing shoes.
What were your initial intentions when it came to shooting your documentary ‘I Know I’m not Alone’?
“When I first went over there I wasn’t intending to make a film, I was just intending to see what things were like. When I got back I had hours of videotape so we started editing it into a film. As I watched things take shape, a lot of emotions came up so I’d grab my acoustic guitar and write about what I was feeling and the result is both the film and the album.”
How were your preconceptions of Iraq altered during the course of shooting?
“I think the biggest one is that what you see on TV is Journalists and Politicians talking about the economic and political costs of war but you never see human beings on the street. It was really a shock for me when I first got there to see people doing normal things like walking to a café of shopping for fruit while there’s tanks driving by and soldiers jumping off arresting people in the street. The major preconception that I had was that the US soldiers were the problem. When you get there you realize that the soldiers are just there doing the dirty work. The people making decisions are the people who never have to see what’s going on there.”
Traveling round the world must give you an insight into what’s happening with Hiphop on a global scale. How has the Australian Hiphop scene progressed?
“When Hiphop first started spreading around the world I’d go to Germany and I’d see Rappers dressed like Run DMC and talking about life in New York. It was the same in Japan, just a knock off of New York style Hiphop. Then gradually over the years people started to express what they were about and where they come from. That’s really what I’ve experienced with Australian Hiphop. Whether they’re well known artists or whether I’m out somewhere and people are just Freestyling and Beatboxing on a street corner, people are talking about where they’re from.”
There’s an entry on your Wikipedia page that says you haven’t worn shoes since the year 2000. Is that true?
“I was in New Zealand and I spent a couple of weeks out in the jungle with some Maoris who were living a traditional life which included wearing no shoes. I tried talking off my shoes and I couldn’t take three steps with out going ‘Oww! Oww! Oww!’ so when I got back to San Francisco I decided I was going to do a fast, just to see if I could go three days around my house without wearing shoes. I started off just walking round my studio and walking to the corner store and just went from there. I have a pair of Haviana Flip Flops that I wear on aeroplanes. I always tell people my feet are 100% Genuine Leather.”
You’ve spent a lot of time in Australia. Have there been any artists recently that have caught your attention?
“There’s a great up and coming guitarist in Sydney called Kieran and he’s jammed with us a couple of times on stage at Byron Bay. He’s a phenomenal guitarist and he’s only like 16. Last time I was in Byron we were hanging out in my hotel room playing guitar. I said to him ‘Kieran, last time we played together, I asked if you would sing and you said you would next time’. Anyway he started to sing and he just had the most amazing voice. I’m really looking forward to seeing him blossom. I think he’s going to be a great international artist.”
With your schedule, do you write and record on the road?
“I have a studio and a video editing unit downstairs. When I’m on the road I don’t really record that much. I do a little bit of stuff on Garageband and on my computer but I usually just write songs on my guitar, remember them and record them when I get home.”
With over 5,000 artists adding albums onto iTunes a week, how do you think the digital age is affecting the way we listen to music?
“As always, the DJ is really important. And when I mean the DJ, I mean whatever channels deliver people to music. It could be a magazine, a track spinning in a club or a website. I just think it’s amazing that instead of having 25 albums in our record collection we can have 25,000. It’s healthy for music, it’s healthy for the artists and it’s especially healthy for us fans. We’re a band that has never discouraged taping of our live shows or of downloading. We even allow people to take a line out of our mixing desk at our live shows to make their own tapes and it’s totally helped us. The short-term music formula that’s used by Brittney Spears and boy bands like ‘N sync is to put out singles and have a huge first week then move on to the next band until that burns out I don’t think that makes music that is lasting. I’m reading this book right now about music in the early 90’s and at the time who would have ever thought that Guns n’ Roses would have been this band of great artistic integrity but when you listen to a song like November Rain as opposed to say, Slave by Ms Spears or any number of other songs by those MTV bands, they don’t even compare.”