Michael Franti & Spearhead

Michael Franti (born April 21, 1966) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, poet, activist, documentarian, and rapper — widely known for his numerous musical projects with political and social emphasis, including the Beatnigs and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Franti founded and is lead vocalist of Michael Franti & Spearhead, a band blending hip-hop with a variety of other styles including funk, reggae, jazz, folk, and rock. He is outspoken on peace and social justice and Middle East issues. Franti was born in Oakland, California. His mother, Mary Lofy, had Irish, German, and Belgian ancestry; his father, Thomas Hopkins, was of African American and Native American descent.[citation needed] He was adopted by Carole Wisti and Charles Franti, a Finnish American couple in Oakland, who at the time had three biological children and one adopted African American son. Charles Franti was a professor in the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and died in 2003. Franti's four adoptive siblings are Rebecca, Sara, Dan, and Matthew. Michael also has four half-siblings, Thea, Thomas, Charles, and Arthur Hopkins. Franti attended Highland Junior High School in Edmonton, Alberta through grade 9, later attending Davis Senior High School and the University of San Francisco — the latter, on a full basketball scholarship, averaging 2.4 pts per game during the 1985–1986 season. At USF, Franti met a priest who taught him how to write stories, and soon he was writing poetry. He purchased a bass guitar at a pawn shop and started creating music inspired by hip-hop, punk, and reggae which was being played on the campus radio station, KUSF. Franti began his music career in 1986 as part of the industrial punk/spoken word band the Beatnigs. While attending the University of San Francisco and living above KUSF he developed a fascination with music and decided to start a band. The Beatnigs included dancer and percussionist Rono Tse; the band released a self-titled LP and an EP Television on Alternative Tentacles records. The records received some critical acclaim but little fame beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. The group recorded at Dancin' Dog Studio in Emeryville and was distributed by Alternative Tentacles. In addition to Michael Franti (bass, vocals) and Ron Tse (percussion, vocals) the band included Henry Flood (percussion, vocals) Andre Flores (keyboards, vocals) Kevin Carnes (drums, vocals) and Louis 'Troy' Dixon (percussion, vocals). All members made multiple instrumental contributions. His next project, the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, found Franti continuing his collaboration with Tse, and working with jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, as well as electronic musicians Mark Pistel (Consolidated) and Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto). The Disposable Heroes wrote politically charged lyrics that railed against the injustices of the world, set to a fusion of industrial music and hip hop. Their first album, Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury (on Island Records), won plaudits for its social commentary, and they were chosen by U2 to open for their Zoo TV Tour. The album's lyrics dealt with a range of issues, including the US involvement in the Gulf war, the oil industry, homophobic violence, immigration, Franti's own cultural background and adoption, and more personal politics. The single "Television, The Drug of The Nation" (previously recorded by Franti's former project, The Beatnigs) gained airplay on college and alternative radio stations for its critique of mainstream television, which as the title implies, blames the media for a political numbing of ordinary people, explicit in the lyrics: "T.V., it satellite links, our United States of unconsciousness, apathetic therapeutic and extremely addictive". The Disposable Heroes recorded music accompanying novelist William Burroughs' readings for an album entitled Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales. The distinctive work of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy has been analyzed in various academic papers, including by author Leslie Haywood and editor Jeniffer Drake in the book Third Wave Agenda, Being Feminist and Doing Feminism. The analysis involved the role of masculinity in the misogynist point of view which dominates popular music e.g. in rap music. The authors assert that Franti's lyrics in treating women fairly in relationships is an exception. According to the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy is an innovative contemporary hip-hop crew; a mixture of articulate manifesto rap which broke down beyond the black and white rhetoric, especially in the song "Language of Violence", one of the first raps to speak about homophobia. In 1994, Franti dissolved the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and formed a new band called Spearhead with a few studio musicians, including mainstay Carl Young. Their first release, Home, in September 1994, was a departure from the politically charged rap of the Disposable Heroes and drew more from funk and soul music. The album was produced by Franti and Joe Nicolo. The song "Positive", also from the album Home, appeared on the Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool compilation album by the Red Hot Organization. In 1998, Spearhead recorded "I Got Plenty 'o Nuthin" with Ernest Ranglin for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody. Their follow-up album, Chocolate Supa Highway was released in March 1997, with several changes in band members between releases. This album featured a return to hip-hop elements and a pronounced reggae influence and included guest appearances by notables like Stephen Marley and Joan Osborne. After releasing the two albums, the band split with Capitol Records (reportedly prompted by the label's repeated urging to perform with other artists like Will Smith). The band instead decided to create its own record label, Boo Boo Wax. Since Capitol Records owned the rights to the name "Spearhead", subsequent albums were all released as "Michael Franti & Spearhead." His song "Sometimes" was included on the soundtrack to the 1999 film Mystery Men, as well as the soundtrack to the 2006 film Last Holiday. Also, under the "Spearhead" name, their cover version of The Police's 1979 No. 32 hit, "Roxanne", was featured on the soundtrack to the 1997 film Good Burger. Michael Franti & Spearhead released Stay Human in 2000 under their own label Boo Boo Wax in alignment with indie music label Six Degrees Records. The album's central theme was the unjust nature of the death penalty and other major themes included mass media monopolization, the prison-industrial complex and corporate globalization. In an interview, Franti talked about the message of Stay Human: "Half the record is songs about what's happening in the world right now, and the other half is about how we cope with it as people who are concerned about what's going on", he said. "This specter of war, intimidation, this nation vs. the rest of the world, it wears us out. Half the record is a healthy dose of venting anger about that, and the other half is about how do we hold on to our spirituality, our community and our connectedness to each other." In 2001, Franti was featured on Lamb's album What Sound, providing backing vocals on the track "I Cry". Also in 2001, Michael Franti & Spearhead released the song "Oh My God", arguably one of Michael Franti & Spearhead's most precise resistance songs. It was analyzed in Catherine Chaput's book Entertaining Fear: Rhetoric and the Political Economy of Social Control. Chaput uses the lyrics of "Oh My God" to show how it is counter-productive to understand politics as distinct from economics and culture. The lyrics make connections across science, popular culture and politics. Everyone Deserves Music was released in 2003. Franti composed many of the songs from his guitar and, like fellow 21st-century cultural globalists Manu Chao and Ozomatli, continues to synthesize his eclectic influences. In