David Kupfer: How do you maintain your pace and
energy level without burning out?
Michael Franti: I practice yoga everyday, and
sleep. That is the most important thing. Eating well, and mainly making a lot
of music and keeping a positive intention.
You’ve been a yoga practitioner for
quite a while, have you been able to integrate that into some of your
performances or performance spaces?
I have led a class, playing guitar
and doing movement, with another teacher, with asanas, for 1,000 people. It was
really cool. When you do that, combine the musical and lyrical experience with
an opportunity for people to go into a deep place and work hard, people hear
things in the songs that inspire them to go beyond where they would otherwise.
To do that with live music is even better, because I can see what is happening
with the intensity of the audience, and because I practice, I know which poses
are really hard and require a lot of concentration, and I can tune the music
into that, give it a little more juice, give people the encouragement when they
need it.
There seems to be an extraordinary
positive feedback loop between you and your audiences, which must be
energizing.
Yeah, but I do not depend on it. I
feel like if I am going to the audience to sustain me, that’s not going to
work. If I have to go to the well, it’s not going to work. I try to just deal
with the overflow, that’s the energy I give. Sometimes you really feel it from
the audience, and sometimes you don’t.
As you travel about, domestically
and internationally, what new consciousness are you are picking up on from the
people in the communities you are visiting and performing in?
As I have traveled across this
country in the last four years I have seen tremendous change. I went to Iraq in
June 2004 and after I came back the country was still polling 70-80% in favor
of the war. People kind of know where I lean in terms of the war, that I am
opposed to killing, and I don’t mince words about this. There are better ways
of solving our conflicts. Still, I would speak about the war and the
experiences I had over in the Middle East, and it was a challenging time for
me. I have seen since then, especially in the South, Texas, Alabama, Florida,
this new consciousness. People were coming to shows specifically because they
wanted to be around music that is speaking to these issues.
I see new consciousness in the food
people eat; I see it in the grocery stores, the sales of natural foods. And now
with fuels prices being so high, it is on the lips of everybody — how can I save
gas? How can I save money? In New Orleans, we just played a show, and there are
still people who have not had their homes rebuilt. I saw people down there that
said we voted for Bush and we are still waiting for his help.
On a worldwide level I have seen how
America’s perception around the world has gone from us being this shining light
on a hill of prosperity, compassion, and goodness, to being seen as a nation
that has only its own self-interest in mind, and is violent, militaristic, and
our politicians preach fear. But I have seen in the last year, since this
election has come up, people have gotten very excited about Barak Obama being
an international leader, with a Christian mom, a Muslim father, a white mother,
a black father, he is from a broken home and grew up part of the time in
Indonesia, so he has seen America from the outside. His political life came to
being Chicago, which is the middle of America. He is really a model of a 21st
Century leader.
How did growing up with two white
parents in the white progressive town of Davis, California — how did that impact
your social and political self?
Before I was aware of the town
around me, I was aware that I was different in my own family. I never really
felt comfortable in the family and the community that I grew up in. I always
felt like an outsider. So I always identified with people who feel like
outsiders. That extends politically, on a social level in terms of ethnicities
and religious and cultural similarities and differences, those are things that
I try to embrace. But it is also just that feeling that it could be in anybody.
I am different and my difference is not being honored or respected. Some people
find new family groups to do that in, and that is why I like the music
community. Especially the Festival community, it has always been one that
embraces difference and celebrates difference. So I feel grateful for music and
the Festival community for really holding up that value.
Can you point to the roots of your
political activism? is there something that happened early in your life that
really set you on this path as a cultural social change activist?
I do not think there is one thing
in particular, but I remember as a kid, always reading autobiographies of
people who had gone through difficult circumstances, everything from Harriet
Tubman and the Underground Railroad up through the Civil Rights Movement, and
the woman’s right to vote. When I moved to San Francisco in 1984, at that time
the AIDS crisis was really hitting it hard and I would meet people in the music
and arts community that were gay and they would say to me “when I came out
my family abandoned me and now I have AIDS and my family does not want to have
anything to do with me.” I was thinking, God, they are your family, how could
they turn their back on you when you are dieing? I wrote this song, Do you
Love?, and the lyrics say “It’s not about who you choose to love, it’s
about do you choose to love. Will you choose to love?” I think my political
views always come within that framework, Its not about left or right, its
about, are people’s needs being taken care of. Or the needs of the natural
world.
What was the reaction of you
traveling around the Middle East barefoot with a guitar in your hand? How
disarming was that?
I think being barefoot was more
alarming then just me being there. (laughs) When I would play in an Iraqi
neighborhood where people had been bombed, I would go in and just start playing
my guitar, people wanted to hear music. They just wanted to come out and clap
and dance and sing. Then they would find out I was from North America. They all
thought I was from Africa. They were shocked and amazed.
I was the first North American they had
ever seen who was not carrying around an M16 rifle. They wanted to know about
me, they’d ask a lot of questions. Through an interpreter I would share things
about my life. And then I would turn on the camera and say, tell me about your
life. They would take me into their homes where they hid during the bombings,
to their hospitals, mosques, and to meet musicians, performers, writers.
And I really in making this film, I
Know I am Not Alone, I tried not to talk anything about the politics, I just
wanted to know what life was like for them. I felt like that was the story that
wasn’t being told. It was the same thing with the soldiers. I didn’t sit down
and go, tell me about what you think about the war, Bush right, Bush wrong, all
that stuff. I just asked, what’s your daily life like? It was the same approach
when I went to Israel and Palestine. I said I want to know what it is like to
live life thinking a suicide bomber is going to come into your neighborhood in
Jerusalem? And I want to know what it’s like to live every day where these groups
of Israeli soldiers are breaking into your home night after night after night.
And you have no rights in the community. At the end of my trip I came away with
this feeling that I am not on the side of different groups of people, I am on
the side on the peacemakers. And that within Iraq, and even the U.S. Army, the
Israeli Defense Force and the Palestinian people, there are people willing to
take incredible risks to create peace.
What did you learn about how the
Iraqis and Palestinians use music and art and humor to overcome the stresses of
the war, the occupation in their respective countries?
I learned that the Iraqi and
Palestinian people do it in the same way the US soldiers and Israeli people do
it. You have to make fun of the situation. They have to laugh; they have to
make light of the absurdity of the war, because it is so hard, it is so hard
every day, especially in Iraq where people have no drinking water, no
electricity. Food one day might not be there the next. One day they are living in
peace and safety, the next day there is an incursion into their neighborhood
and 15 people are killed. And they haven’t finished mourning the last group of
people who died. So through laughter, through dance, through smiling and also
through being together. I never have felt anywhere in the world the sense of
communion I had when I walked into a neighborhood like Jayus, which is a small
community in Palestine, and these are people who have nothing, poor, poor
people. I walk into their homes, and they have heard that I am coming, and they
have put out a spread on the table that could serve 30 people, and there are
five of us coming. What they have done is gone to each person in the
neighborhood, and one person brought some hard boiled eggs, and another person
brought some bread, another person made humus, all this food that they would
never imagine, more then they would see in one sitting. Then they would stay up
all night with us talking, singing and playing. The same thing in Iraq, people
were willing to extend themselves
It is a completely different experience
here in North America. We lead these lives that are really insular. We don’t
share that kind of community spirit as much. It was the thing I felt, and a
sense of a little bit of longing for when I left. The sense that, wow we have
some things going great in this part of the world but in terms of our
community, it’s really broken down. I think that is why people come to
Festivals year after year. They want to feel, even if it is just for the four days
of that weekend, they want to be around other people who want to help each
other, share community spirit.
What did you do with the rage you
felt about the injustices you witnessed and experienced in Iraq, Israel, and
Palestine?
It was hard. I remember leaving the
experience and feeling there is no justice in war. Speaking to people on all
sides of the situation who had suffered incredible loss, and I wrote a song
about it called Nobody Right, Nobody Wrong. Because it is very easy to choose
sides and say, I am on the side of these people with these views. As soon as
you do that you make enemies with the other side. The thing is that we are not
going to come to solutions in the Middle East by choosing sides and drawing
lines in the sand. We are going to come to solutions for the problems there
when we consider the needs of the other side.
Especially in Israel and Palestine.
Israeli people have to understand that Palestinians need to be treated as full
citizens, they need to have human rights, they need to be embraced by the
larger community, and have their own state perhaps. Palestinian People have to
realize that Israeli people have a right to live there, just like they always
have for thousands of years, and a right to live in peace and prosperity. The
great thing was that as much as you hear on the news hear about the bombings,
when you are there, you hear about all these great groups that are coming
together, meeting and creating this dialogue, one on one on the street, beyond
the politics, beyond what is on the news, beyond the violence. You see people
on the ground who are doing these amazing peace-building things. Ultimately,
when I left, that was the feeling I went away with. I didn’t feel helpless or
hopeless, I went away feeling like, man, I have just been at the birthplace of
this beautiful evolution. It made me go away thinking I want to encourage that
as much as I can.
What was it like using the new for
you medium of film to convey ideas?
It has been exciting learning how
to use film. I had made a few music videos in the past, but to take 200 plus
hours of video footage and distill it down to 86 minutes, and then go on the
road and talk about it. We recently showed the film in Dubai, and it is
amazing, the power of film, you can go with your home cameras, edit together on
your laptop, and now the film is in Dubai. It has shown in Japan, China,
Indonesia, and Australia. It is going to be broadcast in many places in Europe,
in South Africa. The power of film is so amazing. I compare it to the live show
experience.
What does somebody want to experience
when they go to a show? Do they want to hear the song just like they heard on
the record? No, they want to see Dave Mathews walk away from the mic and scream
into the air. Or they want to see Bob Weir just take off on something he just
heard the drummer play and go into this whole other little thing that is brand
new right in the moment. They want to see the artist go onstage, and maybe they
are angry that day, maybe they kind of freak out a little, or maybe they are
really happy that day, they want to experience that intimacy that you just
don’t get from a recording. It is the same thing when you capture something on
film. If you capture actors on film, maybe they can deliver these really great
performances with a great script. But if you can capture somebody who is
telling their truth about what they have been through on film, you see them
laugh and cry, and you hear their story from their own mouth, its about
establishing that intimacy. That’s what we did with the film, is try to really
stay away from telling the story, and just let the story be the emotions of the
people.
Don’t you have a new film project
that is underway that aims to engage citizens in different countries?
We have two of them actually. One
called Stay Human that I have been working on for years. I have been
interviewing people around the world about what does it mean to be human, and
how do they stay human, how do they hold onto their humanity. I have interviewed
people on the street; I have interviewed people in the midst of war, musicians,
scientists, doctors, and taxi drivers. Last year I went to Hiroshima and
interviewed members of Hibakasha, survivors of the US atomic blasts.
The next thing that we are doing is a
film project in Africa. We have been working on a Festival that we are putting
on in Tanzania, a Power to the Peaceful Festival. It has taken several years,
things work very slowly when you are working with business, government,
musicians, producers, promoters, to put on a Festival, but we have a date of
February 2009.
Is there a downside to wearing your
politics on your sleeve?
What I try to do is not wear it on
my sleeve. I try to let my songs speak for themselves. When I have a conversation
like this, I am open about it, but when I play, I try to just connect with the
audience, I want to see people laugh dance smile, sing. It’s really like the
politics of attraction. It is like you see somebody having a great time and you
wonder, what are they on? I want some of that! That is what we try to do is
make it be this great experience and then they want to find out more.
I used to get a lot of questions
especially coming back from Iraq, when I would go through airports. But having
spoken to musicians in Iraq who have had to flee the country because of their
political views, or there was the one band who had to write songs about how
great Sadaam was in order to make music, then when Sadaam was gone, everybody
remembered them as the band who made songs about Sadaam, and they were like, we
didn’t want to that, we just wanted to rock out. And now they are facing death
by another group of people. I haven’t led that life at all. Sometimes people
don’t like our content and have disagreements with us, for the most part, what
we try to include everybody.
What’s the experience been for you
to bring your music into prisons?
That has been one of the greatest
gifts that music has blessed me with. I was watching TV MSNBC yesterday at 3
a.m. and there was a report on San Quentin Prison. I recognized these dudes on
this TV show, I recognized the warden, the guards. Of course the TV show
highlights all he worst aspects of violence in prison, how they make weapons
and stuff like that. But when you go there you really see the humanity. You see
people who look just like you or me. Its like, man, but for the grace of god,
had I been born in a different situation or something happened to me where I
made a decision a wrong way, I could be there too.
When you first walk in, you’ve got the
men in their prison uniforms, you’ve got the guards in their uniforms, the
warden and his three piece suit. But then as soon as you start playing music,
all you see is eyes, you see smiles, you see the warden start to clap. You see
his wife come and visit the prison on that day when you are there, and it’s
like this special thing, and everybody is dancing and singing. The song that
got them, everybody in the yard to sing was the theme to Sesame Street.
(laughs) We played that, everybody knew it. It sounds like a funny thing, but
for me it was like really a revelation. You know what? Everybody here was a
kid.
At some point we all watched this silly
show with puppets and we all had these dreams of whatever it was in our lives
that we wanted to be. Somewhere along the way, these cats ended up here and I
ended up where I am. It really makes you realize that some people are set up by
the conditions of the community that they grow up in to end up there. In
California, we plan for prisons to be built 12 18 years down the road. We are
building those prisons not for the criminals of today, we are building them for
the kids who are five years old.
To me the priority should be education,
jobs, and healthcare. Providing people with every incentive to not have to make
those decisions that end them up in those places.
What are your thoughts as to what
it is going to take for this country to heal the wounds that have been created
from our creating a war against the Iraqi people and supporting despots around
the world?
It is going to take decades, but
first they have to take that intention that that is what we want to do. That’s
why as I have traveled around the world I see the campaign of Barak Obama as
being so important. If he is elected he will be the biggest star on the planet.
He will be the celebrity in the world that everyone will know his face, more
then any athlete, entertainer, any figure today. He is someone who represents
that hope for people, and I really feel like the damage that has been done
through Abu Grabe torture, Quantanamo, all the other secret prisons we have had
around the world, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, has been so much to
highlight the greed and militarism of the American government that it dimishes
what I feel is the truth about this country, which is that we have a few
leaders who are really greedy, who want to hold on to that. But the masses of
people in America are really good people.
I was in Michigan yesterday and met the
nicest people. All over the country, you meet beautiful, nice kind people, who
if they saw with their own eyes what was happening in Iraq, in Aphghanistan,
these places, they would understand it, because they understood it when it
happened in New York City on 9-11, and they felt it. Imagine, that was one day
of bombing. Imagine the last seven years of bombing every day, the type of
anger and hostility that leads to.
It is going to take a leader with a
vision, it’s going to take a nation that supports those ideals. It is going to
take reaching out to different nations around the planet and saying hey we
can’t do this alone, we need everybody on board. I think maybe the most
important thing is the idea of giving. We don’t want to be seen as a nation
that is always taking, taking, taking, and never gives. We have to be viewed as
a nation that is giving first.
How has your idealism evolved as you
had kids, seen them grow and leave home, enter middle age?
I think I am more result oriented
then I was. What I mean by that is I have been a vegetarian for a long time,
but if I were to go around the world trying to convince everybody that they
should be vegan, because the meat industry contributes so much to global
warming, and because of cruelty to animals, and all these other reasons, I
could convince maybe one tenth of one tenth of one percent of the population to
become vegan. But in terms of how that would affect the climate, and all these
other issues, it wouldn’t have any effect. But if you could say to people, hey,
perhaps consider eating less meat, and see what that does. If you don’t eat
meat for one day of your week, what does that do to your body, how does that
affect your bank account, and consider if everybody in America did that, that
would reduce the waste from the meat industry by 15%. And that is significant.
The same thing goes for energy consumption. If we can all just lower our
consumption, it doesn’t mean everyone has to stop driving and get one a bike
and go live in the woods and eat berries and nuts. If everyone can just lower
their consumption, 10 or 15 percent, we can slow down the pace to delay that
point when we eventually will have no oil left, and hopefully within that time
of slowing it down we will have more time to find solutions tot he energy needs
of this rapidly growing world population.
Do you see yourself as a patriot?
Yea, but I am a patriot of this
planet as much as I am of my country. I even wrote that on my passport, below
my signature it says love the world as much as you love your country. Sometimes
I get hassled for that. I told them that is my signature. I have seen as I have
traveled around the world, that America is really an amazing experiment. We
have so much abundance here, so much creativity, talent, natural resources that
other places don’t have. We have a lot to be grateful for.
Other nations really look to us to be a
leader, and I feel like sometimes we don’t take that role seriously. It is kind
of like being a big brother, and instead of showing your little brother the ropes
of how to get through life and helping him when he meets problems, you just
spend your whole time taking advantage of the fact that your brother is smaller
then you, and picking on him whenever you can. That’s kind of like what the
leadership of America has become. We need to become that big sister, that big
brother that looks to our other brothers and sisters around the world and says
hey, how can I help you, how can I guide you, how can I show you. And then also
look to them and ask what are you doing in your country that can help us to be
better?
Do you see more acknowledgment of
the past wrongdoings are retelling of truths so people can say, OK, my pain is
acknowledged and now I can let it go, thus allowing us to evolve as a species?
I see it on one on one levels, I
see and hear people talking about it al the time. I really have yet to see it
happening politically on the large scale. I think that is why a lot of people
are putting so much effort into seeing Obama getting elected. He represents a
newness that people want. Whether he can live up to that, whether he can unite
the Senate and the Congress to get behind some of these ideals has yet to be
seen, you never know what is going to happen if he gets elected. But, the fact
that people are seeing that there is a light, seeing that there is an
opportunity. That is huge, because for so long people were feeling, why bother.
We’d go out on the street, we’d raise our voices, 30 million people protested
against the war in 30 cities around the world, or more perhaps, and the war is
still going on. People feel frustrated, they feel like, my voice is so
insignificant. That is what leads to voter apathy. I really think that even
worse then an election stolen by electronic balloting or stolen by the Supreme
Court is an election that is stolen by citizens. Now, people are feeling like
we now have a leader who is coming up who can shake some of our senses.
What does it say about the musical
artist who plays a festival and after the show jumps into the audience and
spends 90 minutes picking up trash?
That we should have communicated
better not to put trash on the ground to the audience, and I have a long way to
go as a communicator.
Photo by Foxtongue, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
